A lovely bunch of coconuts...

Wow, has it been three weeks? I am the world's worst blogger. And now that I know my photos don't have to be so tiny, but don't know how to make them bigger, I am really starting to question.

Bob's at graduation this evening, so while Ava stuffs her face with popcorn and watches Underdog, I am going to steal a few minutes on the computer.

The weekend after Easter, we spent the better part of two days with our neighbor down the road, Clarastine, while she turned 40 coconuts into three bottles of coconut oil. It was quite an experience! This great-grandmother used a pick ax to open the outer shell, a hammer to open the inner shell, and she DRANK the coconut water out of all 40 coconuts. The next day she was SO pleased to tell me how many times this caused her to use the bathroom. Between bathroom breaks she had chopped all the coconut meat into little chunks, and we spent serveral hours putting this through her food processor. I tried one coconut on the pick ax and about had a heart attack before Clarastine took pity and finished the job. We poured boiling water over the shredded coconut, and then started stuffing and squeezing. Stuffing it into pillow cases and squeezing out the milk. This milk sat in a huge tub (there's Ava with it before it was full) for 8 hours, allowing the fatty "cream" to rise to the top. This was skimmed off and boiled, then strained and bottled. A lot of time and effort, but she sells the oil faster than she can make it, and that is her spending money. Her house is so tiny it reminded me of the Berenstain Bear's tree house, but in miniature. One room divided with walls into three teensy weensy rooms. There is a basement but you have to go outide to get into it, and I didn't see into it. But she has TV with cable, a landline telephone, and the internet! What I thought would be a great coconut learning adventure for Ava turned into her sitting three inches away from the TV watching Wonderpets then roaming the yard picking weird fruits. The yard is lush--coconut, avocado, tamarind, citrus trees, plenty others I didn't recognize. Clarastine eats a lot of the stuff from her yard, including a lot of coconut. I walked home exhausted and felt very lucky to have everything that we do have, and even though I can't wait to move into a larger place, I realized what a PALACE this is compared to her house!