In New England, cabin fever starts to set in around the beginning of March. Kids become restless, having bored of purposeless trips to the mall every weekend. Adults are eyeballing their bathroom scale with distrust, having seen a steady increase in digits since the holidays.

And the whole area seems to hum with a pent-up excitement, like a washing machine about to blow soapy water in every direction and send Barbie and friends floating through the basement on a white water rafting trip they could not have predicted.

To keep our sanity, we resort to: 1) an increase in alcohol consumption, 2) a sudden fascination with driving aimlessly just to get out of the house, and 3) making plans with people we don’t actually like, simply for something to break the monotony.

Or, in my household, we buy a pineapple. Silly as it sounds, eating a tropical fruit when it is 30 degrees outside is sublime. Thanks to a southern hemisphere that grows stuff while we’re busy shoveling snow and also thanks to the miracle of international shipping, we have access to fruits at a time when the only thing growing here is our impatience for spring.

But cutting up a pineapple is pain, if you haven’t devised a plan of attack. Its thick skin, balloon shape, and fibrous core make cutting it a challenge. Fortunately, I’ve managed to develop the easiest pineapple peeling plan possible and have documented it step-by-step for your convenience.

It’s not necessarily a recipe, but hopefully, you too can find it useful in fighting off the cabin fever, even if your cabin happens to be located on the silky sands of Hawaii.

To begin, you will want to procure yourself a pineapple.  If you need one for immediate consumption, look for one that is golden and heavily fragrant (as is the one pictured). If not, you’ll have to wait a couple days for it to ripen, because cutting up and eating a pineapple prematurely only results in a terrible waste of a pineapple. Next, we’re going to get a bit medieval and behead this lovely pineapple. Lay the pineapple on a cutting board and use a sharp serrated knife to cut off the top leafy portion and throw it into your compost pile. 

Now you want to place the pineapple upright and carefully run the edge of your blade along the sides, cutting just below the peel. I cut very close to the surface since I don’t mind the little “eyes” but if those bother you, by all means, feel free to cut a bit more off to get rid of them.

Cut off the bottom of the pineapple and then chop the pineapple in half, top to bottom.

Take each half and cut off the tender pineapple sections from the tough core as demonstrated in the following pictures. This will make for quick and easy chopping, as you will see in a moment.

Turn it and then chop again.

Do this for the other half and line up all your sections so they are all even and pretty.

Chopping your pineapple like this makes for evenly sized pieces and less time spent prepping and more time enjoying.

And enjoy!