I’ve recently put my family on a “primal” diet. (Never heard of it? Start here.) Basically, if you can’t hunt or gather it, we aren’t eating it. Mostly.
Cutting out wheat makes it really hard on bakers, so I’ve been using rice flour (kind of a cheat, but whatever) and almond flour. Because coconut flour is $32 a pound–not exaggerating.
I saw young coconuts at the grocery store last night and thought, “Hey, I’ll get those. Maybe I can make my own flour.” After fifteen minutes, I became convinced that to film the coconut-opening scene in Castaway, they just tossed Tom Hanks a coconut and said, “Good luck, dude. Aaaaaaaand action!”
Look.
All the tools in that picture: a very sharp knife, a very “heavy” knife (as per instructions), a screwdriver tip, a wine corkscrew, a meat smashing hammer, a butter knife, and an apple corer.
I finally got tiny holes in the shell by hitting a screwdriver tip into the coconut with the hammer. Got about seven drips of water out of the thing.
This was big success. However, I couldn’t get any farther than this.
After asking my husband for help, he tried hitting my “heavy” knife with the meat hammer. It broke the hammer.
Then he went out to the garage and hit the knife with a sledgehammer. And then used an electric screwdriver.
I laughed and went back in the house. A few minutes later he came in with it:
He used a machete. A freakin’ machete. (Before you freak out that we own a machete, let me tell you that, no, he is not a weapon collecter. The machete was originally–and still primarily–used to cut heavy plant undergrowth.) So instead of the game being “Rock, paper, scissors” it could be “Coconut, paper, machete” and actually be more accurate.
Then we used a spoon to pop out a couple ounces of coconut meat.
That’s it?
Moral of the story: never waste three dollars on a coconut. Just buy the $32 coconut flour, because it turns out that that’s a deal. Supply and demand and whatnot.
Canny Gal 