Pineapple Coconut Bars

Pineapple Coconut Bars Kitchen: Gayle Anderson

Ingredients 2 cups flour ¾ cup butter, softened ½ tsp vanilla extract 1 1/3 cup sugar, divided ½ tsp kosher salt, divided 4 cups fresh pineapple, chopped ½ cup coconut ¼ cup cornstarch 1 ½ Tbl lemon juice ¼ cup silvered almonds (optional)

Steps: Preheat oven 375 and lightly ocat a 9” square baking pan with cooking spray. In a mixing bowl, beat flour, butter, vanilla, 1 cup of sugar and ¼ tsp salt till mixture resembles coarse crumbs, about 1 minute. Reserve 1 cup of crumb mixture in a small bowl for the topping. Press remaining crumb mixture evenly into bottom of the prepared pan. Bake crust until golden brown, about 18 minutes and let cool 30 min. (don’t turn oven off) Meanwhile stir together chopped pineapple, cornstarch, lemon juice, coconut, 1/3 cup of sugar and ¼ tsp of salt until thoroughly combined. Spread over baked crust (top with almonds if desired). Bake at 375 for 45-55 minutes.

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Gayle Anderson

If you have been reading this wonderful magazine for a while and maybe tried one or two of my recipes, you probably already guessed that one of my favorite things to do is bake. And besides baking and cooking, I do like to host people in my home. For me nothing evokes happy times than gathering those you hold near and dear around the table. As my extended family grew, so did my dining table, which is now 96” and can hold about 12-14 and sometimes that isn’t enough.

I am also a planner. Sometimes I try not to be as I like spontaneity and unplanned events, which are often some of the most fun. But usually I’ll get some kind of crazy idea that sounds like fun and will then work to put things in motion. I just can’t help myself, and when I utter the words “I have a plan” it will often strike fear into my family’s heart, especially my mom. But to give them credit, they are usually game and participate without too much complaining. Every once in a while, though my adventures will crash and burn, like the time I took my mom to a horrid movie that I thought was a comedy and it turned out to be a violent weird movie. Umm, let’s just say I forgot to read the reviews as I saw famous actors playing in it, and well, now I read movie reviews. For the life of me, I can’t imagine why that movie was nominated for an award, but I guess they forgot to ask me for my thoughts. Haha!

To give my family a break for the next planned event, I turned my attention to a few of my unsuspecting neighbors. Luckily for me there was wine and beer involved when I pitched the idea and they readily agreed. One of the things I love most about my Mr. Right (Rod), is that he is always a willing victim for whatever I plan and he is an excellent cook. The event that came to be was putting together a neighborhood progressive dinner for about 4 households, plus we added in a few other neighbors for good measure. During the planning, the women tasked the men with the opportunity to do the cooking. I assured my neighbors, “this will be fun, trust me!” Then I asked if there was a “theme for dressing up for the occasion” and I got blank looks…. So now I’ve decided that, of course, this must lead to some kind of “future theme party”. (Just the thoughts of a theme party has me thinking. Once I threw a polyester party… but there are soooo many options). Anyway, for starters- a progressive dinner is a good beginning and I’ll work on them for expanding into a bit more adventure. (I’m just happy there aren’t any neighborhood covenants in place where they could vote me out of the area!)

And here is what a neighborhood progressive dinner looks like. We started at my house for drinks and appetizers. And as I said, the men were tasked with the menu. My idea of hors d’ oeuvres is vastly different from Rod’s as I don’t like small detail work, especially when it comes to food. But as Mr. Right pointed out, he was in charge and he actually loves stuffing mushrooms, wrapping bacon around individual dates and other time consuming things. So I happily I surrendered the kitchen to him and let him create. The complete menu was: xoxo. Next, the salad portion of the meal was at Dwayne & Connie’s home. And they served a scrumptious green salad I could have made a whole meal from. From there we had the main course at Sam & Debbie’s home where the creative Sam made seafood lasagna. Home&Harvest Mar/April 2020 41

Best of all, the neighbors were up for the adventure, the food was wonderful, the company was excellent and good memories were created. If you have never tried a progressive dinner before, they are the best and I can almost guarantee that some funny story will arise. And I’ll share a humorous insight from my world. A few years ago I convinced my family to do a progressive Christmas dinner and it ranged from Moscow to Genesee and took the whole day. I had assigned each of the family members a course. My brother Doug, who was single at the time, was given the task of appetizers. Little did I know that he had no idea what to do and that his cooking skills were limited. So bless his heart, he decided to do a vegetable tray even though he hates vegetables. We arrived at his home and he opens his refrigerator and places a (still wrapped) head of cauliflower and a large bunch of broccoli on the counter and opens up a container of ranch dressing: the “Doug version of a veggie tray.” Of course, my youngest daughter who was around 12 was a bit appalled at the offering says, “Uncle Doug, you are such a bachelor!“ And then of course, we all got the giggles, and after a bit of good natured chiding, my mom and I went into action, cut up the veggies, put them on a tray and all was well. In fact we enjoyed the progressive Christmas dinner so much that we did that one more time. And by that time, my brother had married Edie, a wonderful woman who is an excellent cook and had the appetizer duty well under control.

My Mr. Right was beyond excited to partake in the progressive dinner and had commented that people don’t seem to do that in larger cities such as Spokane where he lives. And like I mentioned before, he actually likes my planned events and has never complained once about anything I spring on him. And hopefully by the time this article is in your home, that he and his dog will have moved from Spokane to join me and my crazy herd of dogs where we will be a blended family to some very spoiled pooches.

I think next on the horizon is a block party, although I haven’t yet sprung that on my neighbors. And when you live in the country, well the block party could basically be the radius of 7 miles. And I have a plan… to be continued and launched sometime this fall if all goes well.

My hope for each of you, is that you too will reach out to those you enjoy keeping company with and creating good times. Yes, hosting does take a bit of work and planning, but the payoff in the end is worth it. People and gatherings are what the spice of life is all about. You don’t have to possess spectacular culinary skills, (I certainly don’t) but if I can do it, so can you. Heck, just order a pizza, open a bag of packaged salad and gather your tribe over. Trust me, it will be fun.