Pineapples and other drink garnishes

Okay, I'm a newbie to the tropical coktail scene, being a beer drinker lo these many years.
How long does pineapple last? My wife and I enjoy a drink maybe a few times a week, but I've never dealt with pineapples before. Do they go bad fairly quickly? Can you freeze pineapple wedges? Do they make "fake" wedges just for the look?
I've got umbrellas and cherries (how long do those keep, BTW?), and was also wondering about other garnishes. Any tips?

Thanks, Patrick

This might be a start:
http://www.dole.com

Menu at bottom of page, click on "Ask Dole" which is their FAQ section.

Hope it helps!
SugarCaddyDaddy

I cut the pineapple into wedges and put it in a tupperwear container in the fridge. They last a couple weeks or so. If you freeze them they turn brown. I like to go to the Mexican Markets (like IGA),pineapple tends to be cheaper. I spear a couple PA leaves thru a cherry and a PA wedge, easy garnish. Cherries seem to last forever. I think they have a halflife of a thousand years or so.
Al

Of the pineapple, cherries, and paper umbrellas it's the paper umbrellas you have to worry about most. They can go stale pretty fast even if properly stored. It's best to buy them in season (early March to late February). Buy fresh. Domestic one's cost more than imported but the money is well worth it. If you happen to live in the eastern lower mid west upper central region you may find a u-pick cocktail umbrella farm which could save you a bundle.

Experts may give a shelf life to maraschino cherries but as long as they're red and firm and not fuzzy they should be fine as nobody ever eats them and those that do probably don't have taste buds anyway. But as maraschino cherries are fairly cheap don't chance it, if you know you're throwing a shindig then check your cherries. If the color seems unnatural, they taste all weird, and the texture is like chewing on some sort of wax and plastic highbred then they're fine. Should they taste good or remotely cherry like then something is probably horribly wrong.

How long a pineapple lasts depends on how green it was when you got it. In general it seems once it starts smelling like a pineapple it can go bad fairly quickly and if you're not careful you'll end up seeing your pineapple on the wrong end of a car chase on FOX's "World's Most Outrageous Produce Inspector Videos". Pineapple seems to freeze fine (I once froze two hollowed out pineapples for later use and they looked fine) so you could freeze wedges. They'll get all frosty when you take them out of the freezer, but it's not unsightly. If the pineapple was on the firm side when you froze the wedges they should be firm when defrosted. Experiment...Unless you live in Georgia or Arkansas where sate laws against personal pineapple experimentation were recently upheld by the Supreme Court.

Save the artificial fruit garnish for artificial drinks such as Xima.

[ Edited by: woofmutt on 2002-06-20 07:55 ]

Nothing ruins a drink more than a stale umbrella!

Citrus slices, gardenias & orchids make nice garnishes.

Frilly toothpicks. Give that cherry some pizazz by stabbing it with a frilly toothpick.

Bamboo skewers. Great to stack a mountain of fruit slices onto.

Fresh mint.

Hollowed out pineapple. Many kitchen gadget stores sell pineapple corers that turn your fruit into a tropical drink vessel.

Try this one: take a pineapple wedge and slit it to sit firmly on the edge of your drink. toothpick a cherry and thin slice (a slice, mind you, not a wedge) of lime to the top of your pineapple wedge. on the very edge of the toothpick, place a small cube of dried bread (not a crouton... the toasted garlic aroma kinda kills the drink) that was just dipped in lemon extract. ignite the bread and serve! (Just be sure to extinguish the torch before taking a sip... wouldn't want to ingite the missus' beehive!)

:tiki:

Just a side note to the marachino cherry discussion. Someone once informed me that if the world went through an atomic blast the marachino cherry would remain unscathed :wink:

On 2002-06-20 07:44, woofmutt wrote:
Of the pineapple, cherries, and paper umbrellas it's the paper umbrellas you have to worry about most. They can go stale pretty fast even if properly stored.

I thought this might happen, but still I pressed "Submit"... :wink:

Hollowed out pineapple. Many kitchen gadget stores sell pineapple corers that turn your fruit into a tropical drink vessel.

Any more details on this? Do you use it right away or can you dry this out?
Sorry for all the dumb questions, but I really am new at this.

Thanks,
Patrick

I bought mine at Williams Sonoma, and its great! You can use the pineapple shell right away for your drinks, and nothing beats the taste of fresh pineapple. I like to toast some shredded coconut and sprinkle on top to serve at parties. A bit of brown sugar or cinnamon is nice too.

mmmmmmm, pineapple...

-Mike

I'm all over the dollar stores for fun garnishes. Besides being a fairly consistent provider of cocktail umbrellas, you can usually find silly toys, ice cube trays in varied shapes, plastic monkeys, cocktail picks, maraschino cherries from companies that went tits up in the McCarthy era, and plenty other things to go in/on/around a glass.

I would stay away from the potpourri and the neon pantyhose however.

Also, rumour has it that you never ever ever put bananas in the fridge.

Re: Bananas in the Fridge...

When your bananas are about to move from their normally edible state, to that brown "yecho" state, peel 'em, toss 'em in a ziploc freezer bacg and throw them in the freezer.

Pull them out for a banana daquiri or other frozen blender concoction.

--kinglsod

Try this one: take a pineapple wedge and slit it to sit firmly on the edge of your drink. toothpick a cherry and thin slice (a slice, mind you, not a wedge) of lime to the top of your pineapple wedge. on the very edge of the toothpick, place a small cube of dried bread (not a crouton... the toasted garlic aroma kinda kills the drink) that was just dipped in lemon extract. ignite the bread and serve! (Just be sure to extinguish the torch before taking a sip... wouldn't want to ingite the missus' beehive!)

This sounds a lot like the flaming garnish recipes in Matt Maranian's essential "Pad." My experience trying one of these out was less than profitable. Preparing the skewer, crouton and lemon extract exactly as described, I lit it on fire and conveyed it to my roommate's room to show off. Sadly, the smoke generated by this unassuming garnish was enough to excite the passions of the smoke detector, which was to say the least, a buzzkill, and then as I was carrying it back to the kitchen, the skewer burnt through and the flaming crouton fell onto the carpet. Unsurprisingly, I chose not to repeat the act at the party I was throwing the next week in our apartment complex's sprinkler-equipped party room.

My cousin's husband has been involved with the cherry marketing industry for many years and has told me more than once about his trip to a plant where they produce maraschinos. He says that the experience has forever made him repulsed by the sight of them, and says if you ever saw the process, you'd never eat one again.

-martin

.... here's another fun thing to do that has nothing to do with the garnish. When cutting up your fresh pinee, cut the top/crown off and leave about 1/2" of fruit. Then peel the fruit off and a few of the bottom leaves until you see little roots. then, stick it in the ground in a sunny area, water when ever and in about 4-5 years you will have your own trophy pinee. let it rippen on the vine. mmmmmmm.

Kitty planted a Pineapple Sage plant in our backyard that makes leaves (and flowers) for a nice garnish. It does very well in our northwest climate and is a striking spring ornamental with an abundance of red fuschia-like flowers. Rub the leaves of this herb and take a sniff. You will quickly understand from where it gets its name.

Ok, so where do I find sugar cane sticks and little orchids for drink garnishments?
:drink: Aloha ! I mean garnishes. that surf room mai tai is tasty

[ Edited by: tiki rider 2005-08-11 19:11 ]

Trader Joe's near us (in Nor Cal) usually have orchids, a nice bunch for about $6. Sugar cane, I do not know, maybe Asian markets or really good produce markets? Our neighbor had some a few years back, he had a bottle of Havana Gold, and we wanted to make authentic Mojitos, and he got sugar cane. There is a grocery store in Berkeley called Berkeley Bowl, that has the most amazing array of produce I've ever seen, I feel certain they would have it, but maybe someone knows of an equivalent in SoCal?

(Hanford - Mojito is not in the spell check! Did I spell it right??)

Thanks Mrs. P, I'll try TJ's. I was thinking too, maybe I could just order a fresh flower lei and then take it apart for garnishes.
Aloha

On 2005-08-11 19:03, Tiki Rider wrote:
Ok, so where do I find sugar cane sticks and little orchids for drink garnishments?
:drink: Aloha ! I mean garnishes. that surf room mai tai is tasty

[ Edited by: tiki rider 2005-08-11 19:11 ]

At one of the hoity-toity places I use to bartend at they used long slices of sugar cane as garnish in mojitos and sangria. It was mighty good, and fun to chew on when the drink was done. I don't know where they got it from, but I know it was very expensive and imported from somewhere not in the states. Sometimes we couldn't use it because it was unavailable.

(here's a wierd sidebar: the TC spellcheck gives "coots" as a replacement for the word mojito. Go figure. :wink: )