The easy road or the hard road…

Nuts. Coconuts to be precise.

Now. I’ve bought some fresh, drinking coconuts in Thailand earlier in the year. I bought some of those in Moresby too a month ago or so. Most common use of coconut juices I’ve seen here so far, however, is to scrape the inside of the things out, and use the juice from the scrapings (squeezed) over your vegies (particularly the taro’s and kukim banana’s, but also Yams etc.).

The house came with a good coconut scraper, and I’d watched Martin do one or two with some commentary – how hard can it be?

Surely all too easy!

One takes the coconut, and smacks it with the blunt edge of your bush knife (house came with one of these too – over a foot long – chances are low of me getting one back into Oz methinks). Then once you get all the away around, you drain the juice, take the coconut half, and start-a-scraping.

So Nath gets his coconut, takes up the bush knife, and starts smacking this coconut in various places around the edges… and keeps doing this… and keeps doing this…and keeps doing this… eventually I get a different sounds, and wedge the knife in, thinking I’m about to score PURE coconut GOLD for my vegies.

“Pop!” went the coconut, and “Splatter!!” went everything inside the coconut, spreading my lower t-shirt, shorts, dish rack full of clean dishes – and a goodly portion of the kitchen floor near-abouts with a claggy, ultra-ultra-yukky-smelly, ultra-sticky residue. Now, I know what you’re thinking, but I am still master of my domain. It just turns out this coconut has gone very bad already.

Took me about half-an-hour to remove most of the smell from the surrounding areas!

Saturday I’m buying some fresh coconuts, with someone that knows what they’re doing, – and maybe some (the easy-road) tinned coconut cream… just in case you understand.