Coconuts | The Real Foodie

January 2, 2014

Young Coconut Smoothie

At around the same time as I read the Body Ecology Diet in 2007, where I learned about making fermented coconut pudding (by blending coconut meat with coconut water and adding a culture), I was introduced to blended coconut water and coconut meat smoothies by Melvin, the legendary juice man who used to work at my local health food store in New York City, Lifethyme Market and has now gone on to open two of his own juice bars. Melvin also introduced me to the idea of adding greens to the coconut, such as kale, chard and collard greens, so I would get my greens and healthy fat (to absorb the vitamins), all in one. It also tasted divine.

Ever since then, young coconut smoothies, either pure or mixed with greens, have been a part of my regular health routine. When I started weaning my daughter, puréed coconut meat was one of the first foods I gave her and she loved it. Sometimes I buy my own coconuts and make smoothies at home, or if I am in a rush I will buy a smoothie at one of my local juice bars. Now that I live in Miami where coconuts grow (!) I buy coconuts from my guys, Kokonut Kreationz at Glaser Farmers’ Market, or I will buy a coconut smoothie from Jugo Fresh. When I am in Jamaica, a local man named Lindsay delivers coconuts to us (the gorgeous yellow dwarf variety coconuts pictured above) or I get them delivered from Pantrepant Farm or buy them at a roadside fruit stall. In New York I go to Juice Press or Organic Avenue where they make and bottle coconut smoothies and call it ‘coconut milk’. Wherever I am, I’m never without my coconut smoothie.

How to make young coconut smoothie:

Select a fresh young coconut. If you don’t live in a tropical climate where coconuts grow, you can buy 100 percent certified organic packaged young Thai coconut meat and bottled water from Exotic Superfoods. Though not as fresh, they are the only certified organic young coconut meat source in the U.S and Thai coconuts are more flavourful. Do not buy the Thai coconuts you find in health food stores which have the husk shaved down to a white cone shape as they are sprayed with fungicide, dipped in preservatives and are up to 2 months old. They are far from fresh or nutritious.

Chip the top away, turning the coconut to cut all around the top, using a cleaver or machete until you make a small hole through the hard inner shell. Pour the water into a blender. Slice the coconut in half and scoop out the soft meat with a spoon. Put the meat in a blender and blend the meat and the water until it forms a smooth consistency.

Note: There is a difference between young and mature coconuts. The young ones are green or yellow, they contain a lot of water and the meat is soft and able to easily be scooped out with a spoon. The mature ones are brown and dry, have little water and the meat is hard and difficult to remove. It needs to be cut out with a special curved knife. The mature coconut meat produces a rich oily cream called coconut milk by grating the meat and squeezing out the cream with a cheese cloth. There are two juice bars in Miami that use mature coconuts to make milk: Milk Gone Nuts and Athens Juice Bar.

September 21, 2013

Tropical Miami

On our way back from the airport after arriving in Miami we stopped at the Glaser Organic Farmers’ Market in Coconut Grove, where we go every Saturday to have our raw organic lunch and buy farm food for the week. It felt good to be back to my routine again! As much as I love Jamaican food I was really missing my raw dairy. I didn’t eat any dairy the entire time I was there because I couldn’t get any raw pastured dairy and I certainly wasn’t going to have the UHT milk that everyone drinks there (although it is supposedly from pastured cows but the UHT process denatures the protein and makes it an unhealthy drink). When we go to Glaser I always get the same thing: Nori roll, raw goat’s milk kefir and fresh local young coconut water straight from the coconut. I feel amazing after! The raw kefir takes away any sweet temptations because it is fermented, which balances out your body’s pH,¹ although if I am going to have something sweet, Glaser is the place to have it. They make delicious fruit pies that are sweetened with nothing else but fruit. Their ice cream on the other hand, is sweetened with agave and so are some of their snacks so you have to be careful and read the ingredients. The Nori wrap is made of mixed greens, grated carrots, cucumbers, tomatoes, avocado, their own cashew herb paste, sprouts, parsley, cilantro and scallions, all wrapped in a sheet of Nori and dipped into a herb vinaigrette. The raw goat’s milk kefir comes from Simon’s goat farm in Homestead. He also makes the best raw goat’s milk halloumi cheese and raw goat’s milk feta I have ever tasted and I usually stock up on it for the week.

Glaser Organic Farmers’ market is one of the reasons I began to love living in Miami. It is where I got my first taste of all the unusual tropical fruits that grow here such as mamey, white and black sapote, acerola cherries, dragon fruit, egg fruit, jack fruit, monstera deliciosa and hall avocadoes. There used to be a fruit vendor called Tim who introduced us to a new fruit each week, our favourite being white sapote which unfortunately is only available one month of the year in June. It is also where I get my weekly local young coconuts from our Trinidadian friends ‘Kokonut Kreationz‘ (who we hired to serve coconuts at Olivia’s birthday party and were a huge hit).

After Glaser we usually stop by Athens Juice Bar owned by the same Greek family since 1942, where we buy a half gallon bottle of fresh coconut milk (not water), made from pressed mature coconut, coconut water and chunks of coconut. It is heavenly and I have never seen fresh coconut milk sold anywhere else, so this is a real secret which more people should know about (the reason for this blog.). I have only ever seen coconut milk sold in cans and far from fresh, usually with preservatives and tainted with BPA from the lining of the can. The milk from Athens is lighter than regular coconut milk which is more like cream, because it is combined with the water. It is a good alternative to milk for those who are dairy free.

I still find it surreal that after living in big cities my whole life, most of it in rainy and cold London, I now am living my dream of being in a tropical climate where coconuts grow; and I don’t think I can ever live in a temperate climate city again!

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1. Gates D, Schatz L (2006). The Body Ecology Diet, 9th edn. B.E.D. Publications: Georgia, p.114.

September 12, 2013

Roadside Fruit Stalls of Jamaica

Driving back from Goldeneye through the beautiful village of Oracabessa, I stopped at two fruit stalls to buy some local fruit. They each stood out above the rest with their charming handmade construction and colourful displays of fruit. These types of roadside fruit stalls are typical of Jamaica and you can find them all over the island. It is the best way to find real, fresh, local organic fruit, picked straight from the owners’ back garden. You won’t find this high quality produce at the hotels, which rely heavily on imported food, with the exception of a few cutting edge resorts that are leading the organic and sustainable movement in Jamaica such as Goldeneye, Pantrepant Farm and Jakes hotel.

The first stall belonged to a Rastafarian named Winston, a delightful character who welcomed us into his shack, cooked for us and posed for my photos. There is a general fear amongst tourists of Jamaicans due to the country’s reputation for being dangerous with its extreme poverty, violence and high crime rates. However, the Rastafarians are peaceful and spiritual people, who live a natural life and eat an Ital (derived from the word vital) diet consisting of pure, natural, living foods from the earth that have no additives, preservatives, chemicals, alcohol, salt or spices and is mostly vegan with the exception of small fish. Winston sold bananas, coconuts, ackee, breadfruit, custard apples, soursop and avocadoes. He had a breadfruit roasting on a wood fire which he opened and served my husband and me on green leaves while telling stories describing the Rastafarian way of life. I had never eaten breadfruit plain before; usually after it is roasted, it is fried in butter with salt (which is more nutritious because fat is necessary for the assimilation of vitamins and minerals), however, it was interesting to taste nothing but the soft, fluffy, starchy breadfruit with the smokey flavour of wood fire. He cut open a young coconut for each of us to drink the water and then scrape the jelly (coconut meat) and he de-seeded a bag of ackee fruit, the national fruit of Jamaica, ready for us to cook at home with saltfish.

Winston’s stall

Winston showing me the inside of his stall where he is roasting a breadfruit

roasting breadfruit

colourful fruit display

scraping the burnt breadfruit

cutting open the breadfruit

taking a slice out of the breadfruit

the inside of the breadfruit

breadfruit served on green leaves

cutting open a young coconut

coconut jelly

de-seeding ackee

Our second stop was Michael’s stall, beautifully set against green rolling hills and in-between two tall trees. He sliced open and gave us a star apple: a purple fruit with a white star shape in the middle, which I had never tried before, as well as a taste of his soursop. He also had jackfruit, ackee, ugli, pineapples, passion fruit, coconuts, bananas and a few crabs in a trap dangling from the roof. He sang a song for us and went into great detail about the Jamaican drink, roots tonic: a concoction of mountain herbs which gives strength and virility.

star apple

Michael showing us the star apple

passion fruit tree at the base of the stall

lush green trees and hills

Michael’s stall

ackee

star apple, soursop, ugli and coconuts

bananas and jack fruit

Michael opening a soursop

crabs

We had a healthy snack for our long drive back to Montego Bay and went back with enough fruit to last us the rest of our trip. I highly recommend to anyone who visits Jamaica to explore the island, get to know the people and buy from these typical roadside stalls where you will be supporting the local community as well as experiencing true Jamaican culture.

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