Chocolate-Dipped Fresh Pineapple and Easter on the Farm

 One of the family care packages of Easter treats, dropped off while we're socially distancing... and blowing way too many hugs and kisses from the car!

This is a new favorite, and it isn't hard!

You have to love pineapple and chocolate, but of course this can be done with any fruit. Inspired by chocolate-covered strawberries, we loved the dipped pineapple flowers in Edible Arrangements... but since they're about $70 or more, we wanted a way to have this amazing bit of goodness without the cost.

What you need:

Ripe pineapple
Ghirardelli Dark Chocolate Melting Wafers

I like to get greenish pineapples and ripen them on the counter for a few days.... leaves at top should pluck out easily and pineapple should have a golden tinge. This guy wasn't as brown as he looks here...

Cut off top and bottom, then quarter the pineapple into four long "spears".

Pineapples have a hard "core". That needs to be sliced off because it's kind of hard and nasty and that's why pineapple rings have a perfect hole in the middle... Then the skinning is easy. Take a sharp knife and just slip it between the prickly skin and the softer fruit, kind of shimmying it along. Leave some pineapple on the skin because you don't want prickles in your fruit!

Then slice the spears into bite-size pieces and blot them with paper towels to dry the fruit a bit. Otherwise the moisture of the pineapple juice can seize the chocolate.

Melt chocolate in microwave or over a small pot of simmering water.

I may have forgotten to get a picture of that. What????

SIGH.

Then dip each piece into the chocolate, then place on foil-covered cookie sheet to harden and cool. Store in refrigerator.....

These are delicious treats, and your family and friends will be like so very totally impressed that they'll think you're not as crazy as they used to think.

(That might be a more personal thing than I should share, darlings.)  :)

And then the dining room countdown to Easter was successful, although I made the decision not to repaint the pretty rose trim right now. I needed to get back to normal and I can do that in the fall. The paint's here!   REMEMBER THIS?????

Here's what it looked like for Holy Saturday...

 I love it.... It looks fresh and clean and organized again!!!! Now there was NO ONE HERE to have Easter dinner or collect Easter baskets or to do our annual Easter egg hunt....

And I hadn't had time to re-hang the lace curtains. You know us Irish gals and our lace curtains!!!!

I found this quilt at an antique street of shops in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania... When we drive to North Carolina I make sure to stop and look for one thing for the house, nothing major... but just a reward for not spending $600 to fly to NC. :)

And those bookshelves have my cookbooks on one side.... And a whole bunch of Ruthy books on the other. It took a visitor to coax me into doing that. He looked at those shelves about four years ago and said, "Why don't you have all of your books here? Why aren't you shouting this from the mountaintops?" And I realized he was right, so thank you, Greg!

And while there were no Easter visitors at our house, we took treats to a whole bunch of folks on Easter and dropped them in garages or on steps or in yards....

 Easter-toned sugar cookies (some of these got packaged and mailed to Dallas and got there in two days, yay USPS!!!!!)

And these were the kinds of treat packages folks found.... some baklava, cookies and a bucket of treats.

I watched Mass on Saturday night live-streamed from St. Leo's Church in Hilton... and then the Pope's Mass in the wee smalls, and how odd it was to see Pope Francis celebrating Mass in an empty basilica. A beautiful Gregorian chant choir of about 9 or 11 people.... all spread out in the very big choir area.  And a handful of people on a half-dozen benches, more or less... and that was it.

And it was still beautiful, because Easter Sunday isn't about the church. Or the celebrant, priest, minister, pastor.

It's about our faith, the faith of the people. Simple folk, like you and me, the believers who hope and pray and aren't afraid to sacrifice. Which is what we're doing right now, isn't it?

And if you think I'm always stoic, I'm not. I've cried.

I've wept for all those people dying alone... no loving hospice, no beautiful faces of family, no one singing them to heaven with beautiful hymns... And those loved ones, getting that phone call, not allowed in to say goodbye.

Yeah.

I've cried over that.

I've wept for missing all this time with my grandkids. To wave to them from the yard... to have them come help on the farm and not come in the house. To have an empty church and an empty house on Easter...

But then I mop my eyes, smack myself on the cheek and say "Woman, get over yourself! It's temporary, for heaven's sake. Now get to work because idle hands are the devil's workshop."

And for whatever reason, it helps!

Sometimes we are our own conundrum!!!!

Wishing you all a happy and blessed Easter week!

Multi-published, award-winning author Ruth Logan Herne hates social distancing even though she knows it's an old and very effective way of thwarting a viral spread because that's what saved a lot of lives in 1917 and 1918 and they didn't even have a fancy name for it! She's holed up in the farmhouse in WNY and working on a new Guideposts' cozy mystery and scrambling to find farm materials for mum production because who knew Coronavirus was going to mess up availability??? (Although she has her seeds, so she's happy about that!)  Friend Ruthy on Facebook, follow her on grumpy old Twitter or stop by her website ruthloganherne.com... or email Ruthy at loganherne@gmail.com