The tropical pineapple fruit is now famous throughout the world. The leafy top can also be cut and grown as an attractive houseplant.
Freezies are a staple treat for kids, summer or otherwise. Recent use of a newly acquired juicer has allowed us to buy fresh pineapples, cut off the skin, remove the inedible eyes, core them, and juice the fruit. The leftover pulp can be used as freezie material, a great discovery. The freezies come out very fresh, tasty, 100% all natural, and very fiberous, providing excellent nutrition, vitamines, and a good source of fibre.
Freezies, or what I know as popsicles, are made of flavoured frozen juice with a stick in the middle. The stick allows you to hold the freezie. There are freezie moulds that you can buy. I purchase all our moulds from local garage sales. These are plastic moulds where you pour the freezie liquid into a section, and cap it off with a plastic top, which includes a stick.
Store bought freezies come in a variety of really odd flavours, such as cream soda. Most are very watered down and have little natural flavour at best and very odd unnatural flavours at worst. Some freezies are frozen in a plastic cylinder with no stick. You throw the limp plastic cylinders into the freezer, and they come out frozen. You cut off one end of the sealed cylinder and start to eat, pushing up the freezie when you eat it down enough. While I realize kids often have very low standards for treats, most store bought freezies are of low quality and high on sugar content.
An important note on making pineapple freezies is that you need to not only core the pineapple, but to also take out all the “eyes”, which are hard and inedible. If one simply cuts off the pineapple skin and sections the fruit, the eyes would come out in the discarded pulp, making the pulp not very tasty as freezie material.
One issue with pineapple in general is that if you eat too much you get what my son calls “Funny Tongue”, where you tongue goes a little numb and feels funny. This is also true when you eat too many pineapple freezies. It’s a good way to limit the number of treats the kids can eat.
We will continue to strive to find better and tastier ways to feed out kids. I suppose this happens the world over. Buying fruit and vegetables in season is cheaper and provides a variety of new edibles for your family. As the seasons change, so does what we eat. I am able, this season, to purchase 2 fresh pineapples for $3.00CAD. The search continues.
Freezies for kids really are a great summer pleasure. Pineapples always seem to me to be one of the fruits that has the most amount of waste … or effort to extract the juice from the rinds.
Your comment on the pineapple leaving the tongue feeling funny got me interested in Why do pineapple enzymes tenderize steak — and your tongue?. My parents always warned us about eating too much pineapple!