Thank you, Rob for looking up the venerable coconut and offering the following (paraphrased) enlightenment . . .
A little about the maturation of the fruit is in order before even discussing harvesting your coconuts. Coconuts take around one year to ripen fully. Several coconuts grow together in a bunch and they ripen about the same time. If you want to harvest the fruit for coconut water, the fruit is ready 6-7 months after emergence. If you want to wait for the delicious meat, you need to wait another 5-6 months. Along with timing, color is also an indicator of ripeness. Mature coconuts are brown and swear like sailors when one attempts to cut them open. Immature fruit is bright green and behave like a petulant child, throwing temper tantrums when one attempts to steal their water. As coconuts mature the water slowly diminishes as the meat hardens. The hard shell inside the husk also forms, thickening over time. Of course this brings us to the question of whether coconuts continue to mature after they are picked. Consulting the book “Emotional Intelligence 2.0” by Travis Bradberry & Jean Greaves, it would seem this question goes unanswered, however the general consensus gained by asking the various crabs that dwell on the nearby motus and dine pretty much on coconuts, it would seem that green coconuts continue to behave as children.
So there you have it. I opened a coconut yesterday thinking it would be just for the lovely water, but it was a “tweener” and was still completely full of water and also had very tender flesh and a shell, although not nearly as tough a shell as a brown coconut. I would swear this coconut was picked green and got a little brownie-goldie lying on the sun up on the trampoline, but maybe I’m delusional. Well of course most folks think we’re both delusional, as we live on a tiny boat in the middle of bufu. We’re pretty sure Toby and Carol think this is just one step up from living in a piano box under a bridge abutment. Anyway, this particular coconut – apparently a teenager – behaved in a particularly surly manner as my trusty Ginsu knife refused to open it and I had to resort to my Harbor Freight oscillating power tool (known on board as the Binford 4000) with the 1” wide hard wood blade just to get the husk off.
This analogy of the jelly-like, very tender or harder flesh and shell texture and hardness of various stages of coconut development could be extended to human development and “life experiences” but knowing me would likely degenerate into vaguely sexual references, so let’s not go there. . .
Anyway, Isabel felt the flesh of this particular coconut was too tender to participate in my upcoming preparation of chocolate chip & coconut cookies. Maybe she thought its cone was too young? Guess you’d have to watch the old Dan Akroyd / Jane Curtain / Chris Farley movie “Coneheads” to get that reference. Instead I used the VitaMix to pulverize some of the more mature coconut flesh already in the fridge. Roasted it in the oven for a bit to dry it out, trying to make it similar to the store-bought bag of coconut flakes required for Stas’s mom’s coconut macaroon recipe. Even improper execution of that recipe once made me temporary “cookie meister of the day” in a casual cookie competition with Randy and Jody from SV Free Luff, Thad and Kristin from SV She’s No Lady, and Aaron and Simon from SV I’m Really Embarrassed That I Can’t Remember. One of the greatest moments in my life!
As an aside, Stas’ would you please ask your mom how many cups of coconut are in the bag size she specifies for the simple macaroon recipe, and how to best adjust her recipe when using fresh coconut which really isn’t as sweet as the flakes out of the bag that one purchases in the baking section? Hopefully there hasn’t been a run on baking goods, similar to the idiotic recent run on toilet paper, although it would make sense. What you going to do all day while self-isolating? Bake cookies!
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