Our (the kids and my) first morning here, we all went over to Mike's workplace, where there are several really nice coconut palms, and gathered a load to take home. It was our first island adventure, and we had a lot of fun together. I think that is when my love of coconuts really began.
The coconuts that Morgan and Jesse are drinking, below, are just becoming mature, as you can tell by the browning of the husk. The have thick meat AND are full of yummy, electrolyte-rich, coconut water. So refreshing, I would rather drink a coconut than a glass of water!
The coconut below looks super-appetizing! Jesse worked VERY hard to get the green skin and husk off the coconut, and with all that removed, this is what the coconut inside looks like! It reminds me of one of those marshmallows covered with toasted coconut. Mmm. If you look closely, you can see that it's full of clean, clear coconut water - perfect for drinking! Here's a fun song to go with this picture: Harry Nilsin singing "Lime in the coconut"
Casey was just tickled to see us all together again. Look at that smile!!! I shipped her (as cargo) to Puerto Rico about three weeks ahead of the kids and me, and Mike flew to San Juan to meet her and bring her to St. Croix. What a journey that must have been for her.
There's a LOT more to coconuts than yum and fun. Here's a link to the Coconut Research Center, where you can read about how special they really are. I also found a fun song about coconuts:
"Da Coconut Nut song" (I don't know who the guy is they keep showing the photos of, so please know that I mean no offense to anyone)
Our yard has about 15 coconut palms, but only a handful have coconuts. One of them is about 30' tall, and full of big, beautiful coconuts. I really wanted those cocos, so I encouraged Jesse to look online and learn how to shimmy up a coconut tree. He spent about an hour watching youtube videos of people climbing barefoot up the coconut trees. Turns out to be harder than it looks! I wish I had gotten pictures of my brave little monkey hanging on for dear life, about 15 feet up! Too soon, Mike came outside and cut the party short, admonishing us for our foolishness. So my partner-in-crime and I got out the extension ladder, and Jesse, my hero, got his mom the cocos the modern way.
From all our trees, we gathered coconuts of different stages, and I spent almost an entire day learning the relationship between my machete and the different stages of coconuts. A young coconut is small, with a soft(ish) husk, and full of water. An old coconut is hard and fibrous, with dense, oily meat (much like you'd find inside any other raw nut). There are uses for the coconut at different stages, whether you want to quench your thirst, or make coconut cream.
I decided to try my hand at making coconut milk. I took all the coconut meat that I'd worked so hard to extract, and put it in my blender with a bit of coconut water. This photo only has a few pieces of coconut - I actually filled it all the way up.
I blended it into a puree...
Then I strained the pureed coconut over a bowl, to capture the coconut "milk." I've since learned that I shouldn't use a metal sieve, something about reactivity, so I'll look for a fabric bag.
I left the strainer and bowl in the refrigerator overnight, and the next morning the bowl was full of milk, and a thick layer of semi-solids at the top. I separated the milk into one bowl, solids (cream?) into another, and pulp into yet another. I added some of the thick coconut milk to my morning smoothies for several days, and it added a delicious flavor to something I already thought couldn't have gotten any better. The solid "cream" is in the freezer, until I figure out what to do with it.
After doing a lot of research, I decided to use the pureed coconut to make coconut "flour," which meant dehydrating it in the oven for a few hours to take the moisture out (then processing further to make the flour). It was funny that every time I opened the oven, my glasses would steam up and make me blind. I thought the coconut would NEVER dry!!! Finally, when I opened the oven door, and my glasses DIDN'T steam up, I knew I was getting somewhere. I do think I dried the coconut longer than necessary, and what I may have ended up with was "toasted coconut flour." That's okay, I still have no idea what I'm going to do with it!
Most of the recipes I found that use "coconut flour" (I had never even heard of it before a few days ago) are for people with gluten intolerance. Apparently you can make "flour" with all sorts of things, but the flour that we're used to using (from wheat), has something called "gluten," which some people are sensitive to. Wheat, Barley, and Rye all have "Gluten," and I learned that up to 1% of the population gets very sick from eating gluten. So they use things like coconut flour, as a substitute.
The difficult part for me is that the recipes I've found are tailored to gluten-free diets, and have all kinds of other recipe modifications, which I don't need. I just want to be able to use all parts of my precious coconut! If any of my tropical friends can advise me, I need to know what to do with the coconut puree left over after making coconut milk!
Enjoy this one last song, a very old one, and start thinking about how many coconuts you will eat when you come visit!
Merv Griffin singing "I've got a lovely bunch of coconuts"
Have a great day,
Laurel
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