Blog du Wren

Fresh Fruit

Tropical climates always have the best fresh fruit (except for berry season in Skagit County, of course). You can just walk around the streets and find people selling fresh squeezed orange juice, freshly sliced pinapple, and all sorts of exotic local fruits. Fruit salads at the restaurants are awesome as well as cheap. Yep, I never lack vitamin C when travelling to warm places.

This past week, however, I've taken fresh fruit to a new level. The place I am staying has fruit trees galore. In our yard, we've got a lime tree that we can't even come close to keeping up with. I've been working on my limeade recipe daily and it is getting better*. There are also banana trees all over the place. The neighbor, who is oh so generous, has 3 different types of bananas, lemon and orange trees (which aren't ripe yet), and passion fruits. I've been making some passion fruit juice that is to die for.

Another abundant "fruit"* that I am absolutely enamored with is the coconut. You can find them littered on the beach or along the paths. It takes some work to get them open but it is definitely worth it. You get a nice sip to quench your thirst and more sustanence than you might think. Amiel, Hallie, and I split a coco on the beach the other day (that I laboriously peeled usingly only a rock) and we couldn't even finish it. Yum. Right now, I've got a bowl of coconut meat waiting for me to attempt to turn into coconut milk in hopes of making a kick ass coconut fruit shake for breakfast. I'll let you know how it goes.

Thursday January 10 2008

File under: Mexico, food

Toggle Comments (4)

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on Thu 10th Jan, 2008 05:53 pm PST dave said:
if you can figure out a way to shred the coconut (we had a little bench to sit on with a raspy-edged spoon attached to one end in palau), then put some in a piece of cheesecloth (or sock) and dip it in a cup of water and wring it back out. repeat 50 times. you'll get most of the good coconut flavor into that water.
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on Thu 10th Jan, 2008 11:43 pm PST Horge said:
I'm fairly certain that a coconut is a mineral...
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on Fri 11th Jan, 2008 06:58 pm PST jule said:
update: Wren survived the coconut opening, but he will be hopping to the fruit stand for quite some time to come.
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on Tue 15th Jan, 2008 06:30 am PST Wren said:
So the fruit shake turned out just okay. Squeezing coconut milk is really hard, as Dave suggests. But things turned out okay. I used the leftover coconut meat in biscuits (that were originally supposed to be macaroons but took a wrong turn somewhere). They were really good.

Also, feeling dishearted by my failed attempt at macaroons, I found another coconut, husked it, used the water for fresh coconut/lime juice, shredded the meat, and baked up some macaroons. Turns out that they joy of cooking uses an implied "dried" when talking about shredded coconut in their recipe. Oh well. They were good if a little soggy.
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