Smashing Coconuts

If I needed any further evidence that the Internet is a good thing, it came last night when we decided it was time to eat the coconut we'd bought at the Korean market the day before. The obvious questions was how to get at the sweet juice and flesh of this quite formidable nut. In the old days [pre-internet], I could remember several frustrating and somewhat dangerous methods I'd employed, that included implements like spikes and hammers. The end result was generally a good bit of the coconut juice spread over the kitchen floor, and occasional gashes from the linoleum but hopefully not from any human limbs. So last night my initial suggestion was to get an electric drill to tap into the nut on the theory that it might give me more control over the puncture process. My dear wife Jos had another idea... "maybe we should look on the internet?" How right she was. Within the top few Google results was a site that said to stick a scissor blade into the soft eye of the nut to create a hole to drain it. Well sure enough, one of the three eyes was soft (who would have known?). The scissor easily made a hole and we drained the juice without spilling a drop. Next, the site said to take two leftover plastic grocery bags and wrap the coconut in one, and then put this into the other grocery bag. Then you just wind up and swing it onto a hard area (like our front walk... or the road), and sure enough, it splits into pieces. It was so easy it was laughable.