Hi Erin! What's up, Honey? I expect you are busy being football ambassador. Good, because America needs you. I spent the entire day dealing with coconuts, pretty much. My Mom as you know, loves baby coconut juice and I spent most of the morning opening up and processing coconuts. Now the locals consume coconuts in 2 ways: either as green baby coconuts where the juice is sweet, the flesh is tender and the shell is soft, or as grey mature fruit where the juice is scarce and unpalatable, the meat is hard, and the shell and husk are hard and dry. The ancients used a round blade with many sharp teeth to scrape the hard meat from the shell, and that would usually be processed into coconut milk. The scrapings would also be used as stuffing. What I have are green coconuts where the meat is beginning to harden, but too soft to scrape- between baby and mature. Nowadays we have blenders, so I blend that meat with water then strain it to separate the meat from the milk. Now after straining, the meat takes on the shape of grain, white like rice but can be eaten raw, with the crunch like a fresh carrot. This gave me the idea to eat it like grain. However, it does have a higher fat content than rice. It doesn't become any more tender with boiling or cooking, but it can be browned to get a nuttier flavor. The locals typically brown the scrapings of the mature coconut to make something called "kerisik", which they use to flavor a traditional beef recipe. So for dinner, I browned the coconut grains then added salt and pepper and sauteed garlic, onions and hot peppers, then folded it all in with chopped chives. I arranged some kale leaves and put the mix in the middle with sliced chicken liver sauteed in butter on top. I used the kale like tortillas to wrap the food. Delicious! Filling! Easy on the stomach! Alhamdulillah!
Natty Sweetie, you must be home by now, and trying to rest. But you have too much energy! Oh no! What are we going to do? Come here, I want to squeeze you. It a good thing you went through the last month clean (at least I hope you did), otherwise you wouldn't have remembered much of it...
Pina, the Japanese put vinegar in the rice they use for sushi. I personally can't eat that rice because it hurts my stomach, so when I make sushi I use plain rice without vinegar. I don't think you will be able to find anyplace in Japan that doesn't put vinegar in their sushi rice, so I hope your tummy isn't hurting too bad. Or you can just eat at McDonald's.
