Coconut: My Old Friend

I know that some people have a dislike of coconut.  I am not one of those people.  I have the exact opposite reaction to it – I really, really love it.  I guess the chewiness factor gets to some people, but it’s never bothered me.  And I love the sweet, tropical taste.  Coconut truly makes many things better:  candy, cake, cookies, drinks (hello, pina colada!), pies, granola, ice cream and even fruit salad.  One of my favorite fruit salads growing up was the ambrosia one with pineapple, coconut & mandarin oranges.  Delish!  A couple years ago I discovered a Kashi granola cereal that was chocolate with almonds & shaved coconut.  This coconut was in natural large thin strips rather than the sweetened flakes I’m used to.  But it was still delightful.  This granola was perfect for parfaits, but unfortunately I don’t find it anymore.  One of my favorite coconut discoveries was a tad more recent.  My sister-in-law, Christine, introduced me to some frozen fruit sorbets from Costco that came packed in their own fruit shells.  So the orange mango sorbet was in a half shell of an orange.  The pineapple sorbet was in a tiny half pineapple skin.  The lemon in a lemon shell, etc.  The best was the coconut sorbet in the half coconut shell.  Runner up was the pina colada sorbet, since that’s a mix of the coconut and the pineapple.  It was in a half pineapple shell as well.  (I remember looking at the nutritional information for each sorbet & the coconut was definitely the worst one from that perspective, with the pina colada being a close second.  I question coconut really being a “fruit” with the “fruit sorbets”, too, but I still loved it!)  Sadly, this is but one more area in which my husband and I differ in tastes.  I feel like this could be closer to the avocado adventure than some others, though – he used to dislike avocados, but due to sushi, he’s come to actually love them.  I tease him that I’ll get him to like cheese someday, but he’s pretty adamant that won’t happen.  Perhaps coconut, though…