Coconut - No Lime

The Coconut - surely one of the advantages to living in the Caribbean!  

I'm not talking about the brown things that lurk in the dim areas of the produce section of the grocery stores in the States (always stuck there side by side with the ginger & the yams - must be the 'ugly' produce section).  Those hairy things that upon first sighting caused our toddlers to point & whisper, "What's THAT?!", as they scampered behind our legs, lest the coconuts roll of their own accord onto the ground like giant spiders...

Sometimes my mother would buy us one of those brown coconuts - we would take it onto the patio & whack it with a hammer.  & whack it again.  & again.  At some point it would crack & the disgusting milk would dribble out & FINALLY it would break - but yet your work was not done;  scraping the white flesh out of the shell was almost as labor intensive.

No - not those coconuts.  Here in the Caribbean we have the nice big green coconuts, which we discover are one & the same coconut, but the green ones are younger.

Inside these green coconuts is coconut water (not milk).  What you do is you get your machete - what, you don't have a machete? Okay, then what you do is you go to the rasta man down the street who will sell you the green coconut & he will use HIS machete to open the top & flatten the bottom & give you a straw.  What you now have is not called a coconut;  it is called a jelly.

My husband came home with a jelly a few months back.  Can you believe we have been here for 3 years & are just discovering jellies?  "Here,"  he thrust the coconut at me, "Try this."

"Eew!"  I wrinkled my nose at him, & pushed it back in his direction.  It just seemed gross to me - like drinking out of a bladder or something, all warm & runny.  But, then I went with my husband to the rasta man one day & discovered you could get a COLD jelly.  Well, for me, that made all the difference.

Soon my husband had a hankering for a machete of his own, so we looked around, but luckily all the stores seemed to be out of the 'short' machete, which was good, because I think my husbands fingers look nice there on his hand.  He wanted this machete because he had decided to buy a bunch of coconuts in bulk (still on the stem).  Think of this - a nice size green coconut is about as big as a bowling ball - & weighs about the same.  Now picture a stem of 12-15 of them.  It took two people to carry it.

Ever wondered where you might store a stem full of coconuts in your kitchen?  I thought not.  I left them on the porch.

So, from deep within the reaches of his 'Chef Tool Box' my husband located a knife that looked scary enough to BE a machete, & proceeded to whack at his coconut.  Then he sharpened his knife & tried again.  & again.  Luckily the counter is granite, so it did not seem to mind when he missed the coconut - tho I did not like THAT noise, of the knife striking the counter - CLANG!, & had to leave the kitchen with my hands over my ears while the mad chef wielded his dangerous tool.  When I would return to the kitchen it would be to wipe all the counter tops & sweep the floor free of coconut chips, which were everywhere!

At some point my husband agreed that it just made sense to give our business to the rasta man, who seems to be good at his job, because from what I can see he still has all of HIS fingers!  Which seems like a miracle when I watch him with his machete - he holds the coconut in his hand while chopping off bits & gently tossing it in the air to turn it about so he can work at it from all sides.

Now that I am a jelly professional, I have discovered that there are interesting things that can be done with a jelly while drinking it.  If it is a good soft jelly, I like to scrape my straw along the insides while drinking.  The white flesh has not hardened yet, so you can scrape it up with the straw & suck it in your mouth along with the coconut water.  The flesh at this point has a consistency similar to a papaya, so it is very soft & flexible.  Then, if you are really hard core, like I am becoming, you've made the straw hole wide enough for a spoon & after you've finished the water you can get even MORE flesh out with the spoon!  A drink you can eat!  A jelly keeps me entertained for at least 20 minutes...

My husband & older son just drink them.  They are happy with a hard jelly (which has water, but no scrape-able flesh). My younger son sees no resemblance in the coconut to either a pizza or a Coca-Cola, so he is not interested.

Think of me next time you are driving thru a drive-thru window - because the ONLY drive-thru window that I ever see is when I roll down my window for the rasta man, who machete's me 4 jellies almost every day.  He gets them almost to the point of being opened, which is good, as they roll all around my passengers feet area as I am driving home.  Sometimes, if I am unlucky, a jelly will burst & spray all over the car - but that's only happened a couple times.

Should you ever find yourself visiting, be sure to come by & try one.  My refrigerator usually has 4 or 5 jellies cooling - they take up an entire shelf! Good thing I don't put much else in there...