Focus On Fruit- Coconuts

I am just now understanding and appreciating the wonderful coconut! Our other house had yellow husked coconuts the locals call "water" coconuts. We also had a taller one that dropped brown husk free coconuts we used for the meat. Locals called those the "meat" coconuts. Turns out that there are really only two major types of coconuts - tall and dwarf. You can use all parts from either. We have both types at our Moca house and are enjoying the young "jelly" meat, the dry "what you think of when you think of coconut" meat and the water. There are dozens of different varieties of coconuts and I don't know what we have but I do know that the green husked giant coconuts are awesome for water and the jelly type meat!

This dwarf type coconut has huge coconuts starting at about 4 feet. In the past we haven't been huge fans of the water but these are so big and heavy we gave them another try. Absolutely delicious! We have a lot of fun things on our to do list and don't want to take forever to do the fancy de husking so we pull out the drill to get our water out. Jeff uses a pretty big bit to drill the first hole. You can see that these coconuts are much bigger than his head. I have a rule about not eating things bigger than your head but we make an exception for these! These suckers are heavy also.

After the first hole he drills a second one to get the fluids flowing more and I stick a strainer over the pitcher and we drain them in. Each coconut has a cup or more of water in it. So how healthy is coconut water? There are about 46 calories per cup (which can add up if you drink a lot during the day). It is low in sugar and has a lot of electrolytes. It is high in potassium, magnesium, calcium, phosphates and other goodies. It has been used intravenously as a hydration fluid where/when saline wasn't available. I don't like to drink a lot and never do sodas so this is a nice, mildly flavored thing for me that is more interesting than water. In the states I like the grapefruit flavored seltzer water but we can't find anything like that here. I wonder if carbonating it might be a sometimes interesting thing? What about the "jelly"? Inside these heavy water-laden coconuts is a jelly-like meat. In my raw food non-cook books I have read about how to use it but today did so for the first time. I used a spoon to scrape out the meat in the biggest pieces I could. I took Bragg Liquid Aminos (which is a soy product that is salty like soy sauce but with a much lower sodium amount) and liquid smoke and marinated the chunks in it. The jelly like stuff kind of looks like fatty skin. I dehydrated it at 145 degrees for around 5 hours and then ate it all! It tasted kind of bacony. The texture was kind of fatty and the salty smokiness was pretty yummy! I will be doing this again. I was going to save some for Jeff but couldn't. I think I may be more excited about this than about the water! We still have the tall coconut for the "meat." I think the husk just dries up and since you have to wait for them to fall the water has all been absorbed and when it hits the ground is only meat. This is less interesting to me. I highly recommend having dwarf coconut trees. The water and meat are good. They scream "tropical" like no other plant. They offer stuff that can sustain you and I think are a good thing to have around after a hurricane. Even if they drop the water stays sterile for a long time and if you've got that and the meat you are set for a while. (breadfruit is another good staple for after hurricanes - but that's another post...wait, I did that! panapen)

Focus On Fruit - Annona family aka Custard Apple/Corazone

Our San German house had corazones (kind of pinkish, sweet and oddly grainy fruit) and some grenade looking white fruits that tasted just like a corazone but had a bunch of seeds you had to eat around. We were unimpressed with the grenade-type fruit and cut the tree down. I have a policy of generally not wanting to cut anything down unless it is disgusting or ugly or both. This tree wasn't pretty and the fruit was crappy. I was happy to find corazones at our Moca house and even happier when they turned out to be a crimson red color with red flesh. The ugly tree is down on the property where we don't have to look at it so it is perfect!
On the side of the house is another kind of annona - the grenade-looking kind. I decided to give every odd fruit a fruiting cycle before I consider taking it out. I have been watching the grenade annona and the fruit is finally ready. I expected to be unimpressed and expected to get the saw out for tree removal. I am pleasantly surprised!

Our other house's fruit looked like this only not pink. I expected this to taste the same and it is different (a good thing). This has a juicy, pineapple flavored pulp that is worth eating. There are a ton of seeds, but the pulp packet around each one is delish! For now the tree stays and I am harvesting these odd fruits every day or two. The texture isn't grainy at all so it is staying. The tree is small and not really nice looking. It'll fit in any mid-size yard and is kind of open in form. You can't really do much with the fruit because you don't get enough at once and of course you have the seeds to deal with. It'd make a good ice cream but would take an army of trees to have enough fruit at one time to make it practical. It isn't THAT good. You don't want to dedicate that much space for it but it is a cool shape and has a nice taste. Plant one!

Emergency Car Kit - Puerto Rico Style!

Just yesterday I reached for my emergency car kit for some socks and...it wasn't there. It was in the house waiting to be photographed for this post! We went diving and as we were suiting up I remembered the bloody ant bite on my heel. I reached for my box and it wasn't there! I rummaged around the truck and did manage to find a sock and Jeff had a band aid in his car so I could do the dive without my fin rubbing the spot raw. That brings me to the subject of this post - the emergency car kit. This is not a kit like you need in the states, you know, water, flares, blanket, food, matches, fire extinguisher etc etc. Nope. The emergencies you encounter here are more desperate and frequent. So I have put together a kit that includes things I have been in desperate need of at one time or another. Here it is!

Everything I need fits in a 14 x 9 inch box with a little handle on top so I can move it from the truck (where it lives) to the car for our caving or more long-distance days. Some of these things may seem goofy but I tell you, it is great to have when you are in need!

So what's in it? The first thing is a baggie that has hand wipes and toilet paper in it. Bathrooms in PR are disgusting and usually have only 1 or 2 of the needed typical bathroom things in them. Slip this baggie in your pocket if you go out to eat and you will never be caught without toilet paper and when there isn't soap you are home free. We joke about "trifectas" or 'fourfectas"...bathrooms with toilet paper, paper towels, running water and soap. Unfortunately these are rare. I am not talking panaderias, I am talking big hotel bathrooms and sit-down restaurants too. But hey, the sit down 30 dollar dinner places serve their "food" on plastic plates so what can you expect? There are some drug type things I bring along. Bug spray, dramamine, aspirin, migraine meds, eye drops, sunscreen, shampoo/conditioner, anti-itch cream and a contact lens come in handy on twisty roads or when you end up doing something somewhere you hadn't intended to be. Nail clippers (helps dig out urchin spines or thorns), hair tie, band aids...all good things that are small. I have a small microfiber towel for when I get caught in rain and need to wipe my feet off. A garbage bag doubles as a rain poncho (or can be used to collect garbage).I have a pair of $5 "I Dream of Jeenie" shoes in each car (not the box) since I can rinse off after caving or diving with them on my feet since they are rubber. I have underwear, a shirt, shorts and socks so I am never caught after diving or caving without something clean.
Lastly I have some food items. After caving there usually are no places open or decent to eat. We end up eating with our friends at the roadside e-coli mobiles (my name, not theirs). Disinfectant wipes help clean the outdoor tables of car grit and dirt. I have plastic forks, spoons collected from other "restaurants" and some staples - peanut butter, crackers, canned tuna, trail mix and a small can of beans. This way when I am out-voted I have something to tide me over until we get home. My advice on roadside food? Don't do it OR eat fried things since the high temperature of the year-old oil will kill more recent bugs! So there you have it - an emergency kit for Puerto Rico. Build your own and tell me what you add that I don't have covered!

The Deck Cover

When you move into a new place our experience is that you have about 2 years when projects are exciting and after that the joy diminishes and you get used to the way things are. The next time you get a big spurt of "house project" energy is when you are going to sell, and then you are torqued that little changes weren't done sooner. With that in mind I wanted the deck covered by my birthday. Why? Because it means we have been in the house for 6 months. We got the bulk of it done a couple months ago and are still doing the finishing up/problem solving things that make it enjoyable to be out there! We encountered a few unusual problems, as usual.

If we were starting from scratch the deck would have been a concrete patio. Since it was a perfectly good deck, and we won't be here forever, we decided to keep it. A problem, however, is this ledge over the downstairs TV suite (family room, bathroom, bedroom). This used to be the marquesina. Therefor the ledge is a little low. Too low to put a deck cover under. This turned out to be a problem because water hits that side of the house kind of horizontal and then sheets down, across the ledge, and into the groove under the ledge thus dripping in front of the sliding doors where I want it dry. It was way too low to put the cover under it so we had to go above it. The first solution was to caulk where the zinc meets the header where it attaches to the house and lay a linear bead of silicone on the ledge itself to direct water. This works great if it isn't a big, wild rain. We'll have to see how it works long term - we could put a gutter or half pipe under the groove and collect everything.

The other discovery is that when it rains hard the rain comes half-way under the cover because it comes in at an angle. Even if we made a bigger overhang it still would come in. Sometimes it comes in from the mango side also. My solution to this is not the prettiest but is very functional. I got a piece of plastic white lattice type stuff. The holes in lattice where too big, wood maybe would look better but not hold up (tons of staples) and a bamboo screen would mold and flap around. I wanted the rain blocker to be there when it rained and be raised up when I don't want it (like Dec - Mar).  You can see it hanging there. It is hanging and then bungeed to the railing to prevent flapping (this is a perfect location for a deck - very breezy). I have to figure out how to anchor it up top but the plan is to swing it and attach it to the beams above. I found these neat screws that were perfect. Now I can swing the whole deal up and out of the way when not needed! To hide under the deck I opted for Heliconias that grow 12-15 feet tall. The flowers are deck viewing height and when they are bigger should hide under the deck. Another discovery came inside the house. The deck cover was up and caulked and functioning. Inside the upstairs room there was this orange glow! The sun reflects off the covering and colors the whole room!

We got a table and chairs. I have plastic chains so I can hang 3 hanging baskets of trailing plants (haven't picked them yet) as a psuedo-wall, and I have another plant stand for more plants. A table cloth and a vase of flowers will make a nice lunch/dinner spot in good weather. For now it is usable thanks to Jeff putting in a light. My plaster chicken family has found a home on the wall as well. I can sit down there and read at night in the breezes while Jeff watches TV. I can use the computer. I need to hang the hammock when the weather is a little drier. I think it turned out great. The project only took 3 days once the thinking was done. The size is 16 feet wide and 12 feet out from the house and was determined by the existing deck and size of the zinc. I still have more than half the deck in the sun because you gotta have it! When I paint the house next year and the plants all grow up it will be even better. The deck? This project is pretty much done. Thanks to Jeff. Another tip though is to figure out what you need and have Home Depot deliver it. They deliver for 96 bucks and that is far better than making a bunch of trips to pick up very long heavy things and have them pixie-stick on the road when an asshole does a ping pong from right to left lane and cuts you off. Not to mention you can spend all your time working on the project instead of getting the materials! Far less frustrating. I just love living outside!!!