$.99 lesson

After Natalie boarded the bus today, Lukas and Konrad joined me at the Asian market. Lukas loves the Asian market because they have live fish and seafood to watch, and I like the market because their produce is much less expensive than almost any American supermarket...and they have items you can't get at an American supermarket. Not that I'm buying a lot of those items...Lukas asks me to, but I don't know what they are and don't know what to do with them. One time I bought something I thought would taste like a melon and it was bitter. I don't have any recipes for bitter fruits. You don't even need to ask if I'm buying any live fish or clams, right?

But I digress.

In addition to asking me to buy a lot of stuff that I didn't know what to do with, Lukas did find some things I did recognize. We bought 3 turnips...I need to find a recipe that will not turn him off turnips the first time...I know they're strong flavored! And we bought a coconut for $.99. We made a no-bake cookie recipe earlier this week with shredded coconut, and I thought it would be fun for him to learn all about a coconut.

So, after he had read his book out loud to me during school time, we took on the coconut. Unfortunately it had been peeled to remove the brown outer husk, so I had to remind Lukas that they are originally brown and hairy. Then we poked two holes in the top and drained the coconut milk out. Lukas wanted to taste it...I warned him that he might not like it. He tasted it and first said he liked it, then decided he didn't. We saved it to make sticky rice in the near future.

Then we went out to the garage and found a hammer and smacked the wrapped up coconut until it broke. I had forgotten how thin the layer of edible meat is inside the husk...but maybe this coconut was on the thin side. Lukas did enjoy eating the fresh coconut meat.

We made another batch of the no-bake cookies. Lukas thought we would use the fresh coconut meat for it, but I told him we would have to dry it out to use it, so it would be better to use the coconut flake we already had.

He loved it! We had a fun school lesson this afternoon with coconut!