COCONUT!

What can you do with a coconut? Well, you can drink the water, make coconut milk, eat the meat, and use the oil in cooking and on your body.

Coconut oil is a medium chain fatty acid. Which is the ideal saturated fat.

But this is not about the Oil. This is about being lactose intolerant for the sake of a nursing baby who is lactose intolerant. He gets horrible, horrible blistering rashes. It is very sad.

So we started buying canned coconut milk. It is coconut, water, and guar gum if you buy a simple kind. If we wanted the regular fat organic coconut milk it was over $3 a can. But we bought it because it tasted good in smoothies and .. well that was all.

But, we just bought a house, and these things can really tap out your financial resources. So we went to youtube.com to see if we could find out how to make our own coconut milk. We loved this video. As I don't have a food processor, but I do have a high powered mixer.

I do things a little differently than the woman in the video because I prefer letting the water drain out first.

To do this, you need a power drill. (I will find any reason to use my power drill.) Make sure your bit is clean and drill into two of the eyes. This will allow a steady stream of water if you let it pour out of one eye.

Then you can crack it the way she suggests, which I haven't been successful at, or you can take your largest knife in the kitchen, and the flat side of a meat tenderizer, or a rubber mallet and use your imagination. :D

Sometimes we drink the water separately and sometimes we add it to the coconut milk. We do the 4 cups of warm water, and we put it all in the blender until the chunks are as small as they can be. Then we use a fine mesh strainer to get out the big chunks and restrain with cheese cloth.

Mostly my husband and I don't mind it with just the first strain, but it is smoother if you put it through cheese cloth.

We place the cheese cloth over the mouth of a wide mouth mason jar and use a canning ring to secure it as it drains. Be sure you leave a pocked of cheese cloth in the main part of the jar or you may have to sit there and slowly, very slowly pour it in.

We usually get a little under 2 quarts of coconut milk this way..

Annnd we just learned that the pulp we have left over can be used to make coconut flour..

Which is awesome for me, because I am allergic to gluten.

The cost of a coconut $2, the cost of three cans of coconut milk $9. + the savings we will have when we learn how to make the pulp into flour.

Life Rolls Along...

I think there are a bunch of songs like that... And some about how life is a steamroller. I think it is more like rolling hills. You never really can see when the valley shows up and there are struggles up them and picnics at the top. Right now feels like we stopped for a picnic, but on a windy hill top. The storm is due, but not quite here.

Gabriel hasn't had his surgery yet, we are still trying to find a surgeon who will be open to discussions. We planted out container garden, annnnd, we bought a house!

I am so excited about it. Officially we take possession a the end of the month. The owner is currently renting the whole thing to a company for their workers, who had a lease in place until the end of August. We could kick the lot out and move in at the beginning of July, but that seems pretty rough... So we are moving in September and keeping renter s in the basement hopefully.

It has 6 bedrooms, 3 1/2 baths and is on an acre about 20-30 minutes out of town.

You know what an acre means?! CHICKENS! And probably a Cow, and a couple of piggies. Woooo hooo!