As requested here are some photos of the Red White and Blue Watermelon boat salad. In case you missed the recipe for nutty fruit salad earlier this week, here it is. This is what it looked like in all it's glory. Hubby decided to add bananas and strawberries to the salad. I preferred the way it looked before the strawberries and bananas went in, and in the future I would not add them. The coconut in the salad was tasty. Hubby's family was happy to have the coconut in the salad, and it conjured up coconut cracking memories from yesteryear.
Watermelon salad produces copious amounts of fruit salad which is difficult even at a holiday party to consume in one sitting. The strawberries and bananas were already mushy by the evening.
Quite by accident I conjured up a way to make cabbage and slaw salad even better. On grocery day, (read: nothing left in the fridge) I used up a 1/4 head of cabbage and one carrot for slaw, and found a partial container of raw sunflower seeds. I roasted the seeds and added a little salt and served in a dish along with the slaw. An enterprising guest added the seeds to the salad, and everyone else followed suit. Roasted sunflower seeds make this colorful slaw so much yummier!
We had a great 4th. We stayed cool by heading to the pool, then after a late nap walked to the miller outdoor theater's symphony and fireworks from SILs house. It's so nice to have the flexibility with the kids schedules that we can stay up entirely too late on rare occasions and have it be fun for all.
I love the magic of discovering something new about your spouse even after more than a decade together. “Firsts” have the same magic, so this is a tale of a family first and a new discovery about an old friend, and it all started with a trip to the market with the kids.
I told big boo he could pick out any fruit he wanted at the store and his eyes honed in on a coconut. I admit, I tried to steer him away from the coconut, being neither a nut fan nor an experienced coconut preparer. But I’d said he could pick whatever he wanted, and I’m always up for a culinary challenge, so I told him we’d have a fun project that week trying to figure out how to eat a raw coconut. His eyes sparkled and in the basket went the coconut.
One afternoon we spent some time watching utube videos of how to open a coconut; a daunting task it seemed. All the videos we found were of young green coconuts being hacked open with a large knife. The boys excitedly shook the coconut and listened to the sloshing coconut “juice,” eager to suck it out with a straw, as we’d seen in the videos. Being infinitely confident in my set of Cutco knives to handle all forms of cutting, slicing and hacking, we set to work hacking away at our hairy stony brown mature coconut. I hacked and hacked and hacked and hacked and bits of brown stone coating were slowly chipping off the exterior near the top by the eyes. We never progressed to seeing any white flesh despite a deep gouge in the hard covering, and a counter littered with coconut shrapnel. I faced two sad faces and said we had a job my knives couldn’t handle.
Big boo was fertile with zillions of coconut opening solutions using hubby’s tools including saws, hammers, and power tools. I agreed that we likely needed some of these tools to liberate the coconut “juice.” Big boo was especially frustrated with the news that we’d have to wait for hubby to come home from work to open the coconut.
Later hubby confidently strolls in and immediately knows exactly how to open a mature coconut such that one can drink the juice AND harvest the nut meat; we needed a large nail and a hammer. While he set to work, piercing two of the eyes with the large nail with his willing assistants he told us stories of coconut cracking, milk drinking, nut meat harvesting, and fancy fruit salad in a watermelon boat with coconut. I’m still perplexed at how hubby and I could have experienced more than a decade of 4th of July’s without ever cracking a coconut? Hubby was giddy sharing coconut with the boys. Little boo liked the milk and the nut meat. Big boo tried both with enthusiasm but didn’t care for either. If you recall, I’m not a nut eater, but I thought the nut meat was alright. I put some in a fruit and yogurt smoothie, and prefer to eat mine this way.
For our family BBQ on Saturday I plan on making a red (watermelon) white (coconut) and blue (blueberries) fancy watermelon salad, complete with watermelon boat as a serving dish. Another first for me. I love how white the nut meat is, and can’t wait to see how it brightens up the fruit salad.
Nutty 4th of July Red, White and Blue Fruit Salad
Nut meat from half a fresh coconut-in chunks.
Watermelon balls from half (or more if needed) a large watermelon
1-2 pints of rinsed fresh blueberries (or blackberries, which ever is in season)
Carve watermelon an interesting shape, leaving bottom half boat shaped to hold the fruit. Using a melon baller, remove half the watermelon in the remaining boat shape. Remove the rest in chunks and reserve. Return the melon balls to the empty watermelon rind add the blueberry and coconut pieces, stir to combine. (I used a butter knife to pry off small pieces of coconut from the rind, then a paring knife to slice off any bits of brown “skin”).
Coconut is high in fiber, but its most plentiful nutrient is fat, the oil that accounts for 85 percent of the calories in coconut meat. Coconut oil which is 89 percent saturated fatty acids, is the most highly saturated dietary fat. Like other nuts, coconut has B vitamins, plus iron and zinc. Coconut oil is high in lauric acid which is anti viral, anti-fungal and antibacterial.
Sound scary? Usually saturated fatty acids are things we try to avoid but new research shows that coconut oil might be a good choice for the "good fats" that should be a part of a wholesome diet. For more on the possible health benefits of coconut oil see this article. Those who follow me know I'm a fan of WHFoods.org, and George isn't jumping on the bandwagon yet. He concedes that it is probably healthful, but that not enough research is available to be conclusive. My take on it? It is a plant based food so it has to be good for the body. But it's high in fat, so eat it in moderation. Eat small portions as you would any nut, use the milk occasionally in rice or desserts, and if you do any high heat cooking (baking, roasting, etc.) it's a good alternative to olive oil and other "healthy" oils that don't do well at high heats. I'm not sure I'd go so far as to say it makes sense to consume multiple servings of coconut nut meat, milk and oil every day, which is what some of the current research is suggesting.
While I haven't adopted coconut oil for roasting (I don't like the sweetness it adds to green veggies and potatoes) I LOVE it on popcorn.
All year I've been super busy with work and was escaping by writing late into the night to post 5 or more times a week. I realized this was impacting the time I spent really focusing on the boys and enjoying what little time I have with them, so I cut back the amount of time I spend blogging. Work is still busy, and family comes first, so that means once a week is about all I can post. I do miss sharing my food experiences with readers and the relationships I've developed through this blog. Thanks for understanding!
Watermelon salad produces copious amounts of fruit salad which is difficult even at a holiday party to consume in one sitting. The strawberries and bananas were already mushy by the evening.
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