Food 30 Mar 2005 03:12 pm
vacuvin pineapple slicer
What a fabulous gadget.
I remember when my ex-boyfriend Jay got one of those nifty Screwpull corkscrews. It was so fun and easy to use that we uncorked bottle after bottle of wine, more for the joy of uncorking than for the pleasure of drinking. The Vacuvin pineapple slicer is like that.
My mother, bless her, gave us a pineapple and a slicer for Easter. (Pineapples are sweet and sort of egg-shaped; they’ve become a family tradition.) It was so nifty that Josh and I went out and got another pineapple just so we could play with our new kitchen toy.
I don’t have a whole lot of arm strength, and I thought it’d be hard for me to use. Not at all. That thing rips right through the pineapple. With a little practice I think I could field-strip a pineapple in well under a minute. And when you’re done you have a neat pineapple shell just begging to be used as a container for a big tropical cocktail. There is a minor amount of pineapple left clinging to the rind, but it’s easy to scrape out; even if you don’t, certainly there’s a lot less mess and waste than I get when prepping with a knife. And the slicer is so cool. It cleans up easily, too. I love this thing.
Update: speaking of pineapple, whoa. I scraped the pineapple flesh out of that shell. The hand that was covered in pineapple juice for a few minutes is now notably softer and smoother than the other one. I suppose it isn’t really that surprising, but I’m surprised that the effect is so immediately noticeable. Filing that little fact away…