Pineapple Squares

Pineapples are native to the southern Brazil and Paraguay and are the only bromeliad fruit in widespread cultivation. Many bromeliads like the pineapple are able to store water their overlapping leaf bases.

It was Christopher Columbus who first brought pineapples to Europe after his discovery of the New World. It wasn’t until 1813 that Pineapples first made their way to Hawaii. The first exports of canned pineapples in 1892, marked the beginning of Hawaii’s domination of the pineapple industry. Unfortunately all of that ended in the late 1990s, when competition from Southeast Asia, Brazil and Costa Rica forced most of Hawaii’s large pineapple growers to shut down.

Pineapples contain the protein digestive enzyme known as bromelian which great for tenderizing meat. Bromelian is broken down in the canning process and that is why most of the pineapples you see in the stores today are canned.