Mike- If you bought a common brown coconut, it was out of season and probably old. If the meat was mushy and the milk sour, that's it. They will be fresh in another month or so, coming from the southern hemisphere. When they are fresh, the stores will start setting them out on display. When they're old, they'll have them tucked away on a bottom shelf.
The drill and glass trick is correct. To bust a coconut, put it inside a couple of old pillowcases or an onion or potato sack, sling it around behind your back, then swing it fast over your head onto concrete. Sometimes a lot of the meat will separate from the shell that way. For the rest, hold in one hand and use a 1/4" wood chisel in the other to dig between the meat and shell, then pry them apart. Be careful and don't let the chisel slip and gouge the wrong meat! The brown skin that stays on the back side is edible fiber and good for you. For me it lessens the sweetness and I like that. Now run the meat through the shredder blade or the chopper blade of a food processor, whichever you prefer. Shredded you eat with fingers or fork, chopped you eat with a spoon. Of course you can just chew the pieces, but you better make sure your dental work and gums are up to it. I love the stuff. Daddybob -----Original Message----- From: M. G. Devour [mailto:mdev...@eskimo.com] Sent: Tuesday, October 05, 2004 10:51 PM To: silver-list@eskimo.com Cc: silver-off-topic-l...@eskimo.com Subject: CS>Question about coconuts... Specifically, preparing and eating raw coconut... On a whim, I bought a couple of coconuts at the local vegetable stand. Tonight I looked up some info on them. I ended up using a battery powered drill and a 1/4" bit to make a nice clean hole in one of the soft eyes, then inverted the nut over a beer mug to drain the water. Then I took it outside, set it on a piece of scrap wood, and gave it a good whack with a small sledge. It broke nicely into two pieces. The inside looked very nice white. Taste tested the water and the pulp, just small samples. It did not taste all that good. Of the words I've heard describing how the water should *not* taste, "soapy" is probably the closest. The pulp is about the same. I don't know what I should expect, really. The only coconut I've ever tasted before is stuff that's been sweetened, certainly. So I don't know if I'm tasting one that's not fresh, or just not as sweet as I'm used to. So how do I go about getting reasonably fresh coconuts here in Michigan? Afterward, I found several places that suggest, after you drain the water, that you put it in the oven at 350 to 400 degrees for 10 or 15 minutes before cracking the shell. This allows you to separate the inner meat from the shell more easily. The meat can then be peeled of the thin, light brown skin using a potato peeler, they say. It looks pretty tough to crab the meat out of the things, so this sounds like a more convenient way to prepare it, but how much damage would I be doing to the nutritional value? Lastly, I figure to try various recipes for "cream" or "milk" using pressing or perhaps a juicer. Any other suggestions? Reply here if you want, or on the Off Topic List, please. Thanks! Mike D. [Mike Devour, Citizen, Patriot, Libertarian] [mdev...@eskimo.com ] [Speaking only for myself... ] -- The Silver List is a moderated forum for discussing Colloidal Silver. Instructions for unsubscribing are posted at: http://silverlist.org To post, address your message to: silver-list@eskimo.com Silver List archive: http://escribe.com/health/thesilverlist/index.html Address Off-Topic messages to: silver-off-topic-l...@eskimo.com OT Archive: http://escribe.com/health/silverofftopiclist/index.html List maintainer: Mike Devour <mdev...@eskimo.com>
