Wonderful article and story! Thanks for posting this.
Growing up in upstate New York, dad would occasionally buy a coconut, punch out the eyes, drain the liquid and crack it open for us kids. We thought it was a wonderful treat. Little did we know how desiccated and awful that coconut was.
About 15 years later (mid 70s), I worked in the Philippines at a remote nickel mine on Nonoc Island. One weekend, we took an excursion in colorful outrigger canoes to a remote cove on the island which had the most spectacular coral reef. A woman and her ten year old son son lived there in a small grass hut and, for a dime, the boy would shinny up a coconut tree with his machete, hack off a coconut, come back down and WHACK it open with his blade. The fresh, just-off-the-tree pulp was amazing and so different from what Dad has served us years earlier in New York. I never again had coconut like that one on Nonoc Island. The memory of fresh mangoes in the Philippines is just like that memory of the coconut.
Mango tree’s are way easier to climb..
[[at a remote nickel mine on Nonoc Island]]
If only I had a Nickle every time someone said they worked in a Nickle min3
I often cringe when watching the folks on Survivor hacking away at the coconuts and other hard shell items.
It’s a disaster waiting to happen as they sling those machetes around
Mangoes and coconuts. My heart flips several beats.
I love them both with paeans and much gushing of saliva.
I cook as much as I can with coconut but all I seem to get around here is “sweetened” coconut. Too, too dry and not sweet like I want to spend money on.
This article says it all WRTO coconuts.