I'm Way Too Excited About Pineapple Casserole

Pineapple Casserole. It won the "what should I make?" competition from last night, only I didn't make it till today - but whatever. It sounds disgusting, just the name alone. I know. Once you get a load of the recipe, alone, you'll probably barf. I know. If you're brave enough to trust me and make it, it will even look nasty once you're done. But it's SOO GOOD, and I danced a little dance once I tasted it and realized that I had found THE recipe (or at least something close enough) I had eaten so many years before...

Flashback... 

It's 2000 or 2001, and I'm currently a early high school student at a tiny nearby private school - a situation I protested vehemently on a near daily basis for the entire four years I attend. We don't have dances, we have "socials." Then later, we wouldn't have a "prom", we would have a "ball", for which our gym classes were usurped to teach us ballroom dancing. Often to Christmas carols. Without lyrics. 

You can't make this stuff up, folks. But I digress... 

At each of these "socials", we have the same catered meal: chicken cordon bleu, green beans, and...pineapple casserole. It was decidedly the most uncool thing on our plate, and I was admittedly a little bit afraid of it. But for some reason, this night of the upper school social, I decide to give it a try. 

I immediately have to get a grip so as not to actually give away that I LOVE IT. It's the "lame" food, and at this stage in life, I don't need any help in the "lame" department (see: 8th grade yearbook photo). I would spend the next two years of sports banquets, parent's dinners, other socials, etc., slyly pushing it around on my plate and trying not to devour it as ravenously as I would have liked; and in all honestly, my attendance at these functions became increasingly more motivated by the promise of pineapple casserole. 

Given its super-uncool-way-lame-food status, however, this was not a dish one could just casually track down the recipe for. So even after I knew I was leaving the school, I still never got the courage to find out the basics to this concoction I so treasured...cut me some slack, here, I was 14... 

Back to 2009. I find myself roughly twenty pounds underweight and determined not to McGain it back, but to eat normal, homemade things made from real food. Quickly realizing that the olive oil on my roasted tomatoes isn't putting me on the fast track to booty, I compromise and start leafing through my mom's old, southern, community cookbooks. "Paula Deen food", if you will, for any poor souls uninitiated to classic southern food. I knew I'd find butter, I knew I'd find crisco, I knew I'd find good. And what do I stumble across in the "fruits and vegetables" chapter but MULTIPLE RECIPES for PINEAPPLE CASSEROLE! I quickly remembered trying one of them shortly after leaving the aforementioned academy, and I remembered so quickly because it was that bad. I found another, however, that actually sounded a lot like what I remembered tasting, anyway, so I figured I'd give it a shot. Twenty-five torturous minutes later, I am overcome with joy as I realize that not only have I found a recipe for the pineapple casserole, it is a recipe that is bound to be high in calories! A double-whammy! I sit down to blog about my feat (and share the recipe!) and then I realize it's just random and weird enough (reward three, in and of itself) that it could probably count as a "signature recipe", per item 38 on the 101/1001 list to your right. Wahoo! 

So here goes. I'm telling you, I KNOW it sounds disgusting, but if you give it a try, I really think you'll like it. Unless you don't like pineapple, obviously.

The Pineapple Casserole

1 (20 oz.) can pineapple chunks

1/2 cup sugar

3 Tbsp. flour

1 cup grated cheddar cheese 

1/4 cup melted butter

1/2 cup buttery cracker crumbs

Drain pineapple reserving 3 Tbsp. juice. Combine sugar and flour and stir into reserve juice; add cheese and pineapple chunks, mixing well. Spoon mixture into greased 1 quart casserole.

Combine butter and cracker crumbs. Sprinkle over pineapple. Bake at 350* for 20 to 30 minutes or until browned. Yield: 4 to 6 servings.

Here's a picture of mine. I had to half the recipe because I didn't have a 20oz can of pineapple hanging out in the pantry; I also used crushed pineapple instead of the chunks, but they both work fine; the casserole that I had from school was always made with the "tidbits" (the skinny chunks like the ones that come in the lunchbox cups).

Oh, and by half the recipe, I don't mean use half the pan...that's what I've already eaten. :o)

...All I have to say is that you can't knock it til you try it!