Food Adventure Friday Link Up- How to Eat a Coconut

A Tropical Adventure

We've been eating quite a bit of coconut lately in a variety of forms: shredded coconut, coconut milk, coconut oil, and my current favorite sweetener, coconut sugar (coconut sugar actually comes from the flowers of the coconut trees rather than from the coconuts themselves.)

Coconut has, however, been a fairly new staple in our household and in a recent discussion with my kids it became clear that they didn't actually have any idea what a coconut actually was.

When I was grocery shopping last night, I saw that coconuts were only a dollar so I picked one up.

My kids immediately noticed the "foreign object," on the counter this morning. I let them hold it and shake it and listen to the coconut water inside.

My husband was put in charge of figuring out how to open the coconut. When it came time to actually do it, it was much harder than expected. It would have been a whole lot easier if we had read this post on The Boot.

All of the water came out of the coconut while my husband was trying to open it, but the kids wanted to try drinking the water straight out of the coconut itself so we poured some back in and let each kid try.

None of them liked the taste, but they were each willing to try even after seeing the previous child make a dramatic "yuck" face!

Next we wanted to try the meat. It was very hard and we difficult time getting it out of the shell. We would have had a much easier time, if I we had read this, and realized that it would have been much easier if we baked it first.

We were having trouble cutting it, so my husband used a mellon baller to scoop out some of the coconut. The kids were also not "big fans," but they did each try several pieces. I think they really wanted to like it.   My son kept saying, "I can't believe we're eating a real coconut!"

It was a fun and educational experience, though I'm not sure that we'll be doing it again any time soon...

Have you ever bought a whole coconut?

Features from Last Week

I am so grateful to those of you who shared your wonderful adventures with food. This week's features are all about veggies.

Recipes We Love shared this rainbow meal. I've seen lot's of fruit rainbows, and even made one myself, but this tasty looking rainbow is made from veggies!

I'm always on the lookout for good veggie recipes and Five Little Chefs shared a recipe for Brussels Sprouts that Kids Love!

The Tasty Alternative shared about their "adventure" making roasted fingerling carrots that they grew in their own garden.