My husband made a great crockpot sweet potato dish a few weeks ago which called for about 1/4 cup of shredded coconut.  So, guess what we still have in our refrigerator?  You guessed it.  What’s left of a big bag of shredded coconut.  I’ve been eating it right out of the bag and really need to stop.  It’s not that shredded coconut is so terribly high in calories, but it seems awfully wasteful.  I know there are a lot of fruit salad recipes and such that use coconut, but I’d like to try something a little less sweet or dessert-like.

We do have an all-time favorite shrimp dish that uses coconut.  It’s basically any deep fry coating mix with coconut added to the milk and egg, then either deep fried or oven-fried; the shrimp come out delicious either way.

A simple breakfast meal that we’ve incorporated some coconut into is waffles or pancakes.  That’s always a hit in our house.  We just sprinkle in a bit of coconut in the batter and cook as usual.  A nice touch, too, is to use a fruity syrup instead of maple syrup.  The coconut really goes well with peach syrup.  You can make a simple syrup just by boiling the juice that comes out of the can of peaches with a little extra sugar or honey.  Then, chop up the peaches and throw them in the pan.  When you serve the waffles topped with the peach syrup, sprinkle a little coconut on top.  It’s really a special treat that way.

As far as using up a lot of shredded coconut, I’m stumped.  I simply can’t picture using layers of coconut in a main dish of any kind.  But, I know there has to be some recipe out there that is tried-and-true.  I’d love to hear from you!