Koo Koo For Coconuts!

thai baby coconut*

After a long day at the beach there is nothing i look forward to more than cracking open a delicious chilly coconut!  Talk about refreshing!  Coconut water is a natural isotonic beverage.  It replenishes the electrolytes lost through sweat, which makes it a great choice for after work out.  Many people confuse coconut water with coconut milk.  The water is the sterile liquid housed within the center of the nut which is papered with thin white coconut meat.  Coconut milk is actually the meat blended WITH the water.  While the meat is a fatty food, the water is not.  Coconut water is 99% fat free and low in sugar without any cholesterol.  It's packed with potassium, fiber, vitamin K, and as i mentioned electrolytes.  The liquid is so similar to the composition of our plasma that it had been used during World War II in emergency situations as an intravenous solution to save lives of soldiers in the Pacific.  If that's not enough reason to start sipping this beverage i'll give you a few more:

*  it's delicious, it's cooling, and refreshing
*  Ayurveda considers it a carminative (meaning it helps to dispel gas) and aids in removing toxins
*  coconut water helps carry nutrients and oxygen to cells
*  coconuts are anti-viral, anti-fungal, and anti-microbial
*  it's said that drinking the water can help break up kidney stones
*  the lauric acid in coconuts helps with digestive disorders such as leaky gut syndrome

Let's grab your coconut and get cracking and sipping.  You'll need a sharp cleaver.  Use the bottom tip of the cleaver to whack at the coco in a circle around the top peak (or you can use a serrated knife to cut the husk around the peak and the peak off so there is a flat top to work with).  After making your circle cut around the top, use that same sharp edge to pry the top off and insert a straw or dump the water out into a glass.

But wait....don't throw the meat and the shell away!  The meat (though fatty like avocado) can be used in recipes.  AND if you scrape all the meat out of the center you have a really cool pot for your house plants.

I'm Koo Koo for Coconuts!!!

*first image sourced from google