A can of pineapple? (What's in your hand?)

Canned pineapple is a regular occupant of our pantry shelf, but sometimes it sits there awhile waiting to get used.  But there really are a lot of ways to eat canned pineapple, even if you bought rings and want crushed, or the other way round.  A food processor will turn bigger pieces into smaller ones quickly, or you can just get out the knife or scissors and chop or snip.  If you have small pieces and need bigger ones, you can often use them anyway; upside-down cake tastes just as good with tidbits as with rings.

Here are some ideas for using up a can on the shelf...or the half-can in the fridge.

1.  Freeze it and run it through the food processor as sherbet.  If you freeze the fruit plus juice in ice cube trays (without processing it), you can let kids eat the cubes instead of Popsicles, or suck on them if they're not feeling well. After our first Squirreling was born, I was told to drink pineapple juice to keep my fluids up (it was supposed to be less irritating for the baby than citrus juice.)

2.  Put it on Hawaiian pizza. Or fruit pizza.

3.  Add it to sweet and sour meatballs, or ham, or one of those oddball baked-bean recipes.

4.  Make Potluck Cake.  Or add it to carrot cake or carrot muffins, or another fruit bread like banana bread.  Pineapple Purée  (see #1) works great in baking.

5.  Combine it with rhubarb, in muffins or other desserts.

6.  Heat undrained crushed pineapple and thicken with cornstarch, as a sauce for cake or waffles.  This works better if you have more juice, less fruit.

7.  Make fruit salad.

8.  If you have big chunks, put on toothpicks with other bits of fruit, marshmallows, etc., for mini-kebabs.  Or on skewers with peppers and meat or chicken, for big-kebabs.

9.  Mix with cottage cheese or yogurt, granola, and other fruit for breakfast sundaes.  I know that's basically fruit salad again, but it tastes different in the morning, doesn't it?

10.  Smoothies.  Or eat the fruit and then add the juice to other fruit juice, punch, or lemonade.

11. (bonus--I knew there was one I'd forgotten). Make Sue Gregg's Pineapple Yogurt Pie.

Linked from Festival of Frugality #384 at Evolving Personal Finance.