every friday i will be posting some pictures of something that i've foraged. cave girls know their surroundings and the plenty that can be found. eating something that you worked to find, pluck, pick, rip up, hunt down, or pummel brings you closer to understanding how precious food is. i find that it is fostering in me a deep respect for the plants and animals that die so we can live. it also shatters the myth of the stupid, bumbling cave man. (a shout out to geico's marketing people...they've got our cave brother's backs! but, little gecko, talk to your peeps about the cave GIRL. she was pretty important, y'know?) our ancestors had skills that we've lost. but we can totally get them back.
i hit the jackpot today. here are the pictures of what i foraged:
not skilled enough to climb the tree so the cave girl uses what she can to get the job done, in this case, some bamboo, and shakes the coconut free
drinking the coconut water from an expertly placed hole by someone who has used a machete for far more than the last five minutes
THAT is how to wield a machete people! a coconut or a tiger....it will be helpless before me! roar!
once the coconut is impaled, smack the machete and coconut against something hard
and you can split it open to get to the meat...or as it's known here, the nan-nan
Cocos nucifera: the coconut
other than tasting fantabulous, the coconut is fantastic for helping with dehydration, the water was used in the place of plasma for transfusions, the meat is an excellent source of fat and vitamin D, as well as glucose, levulose, and dextrose, the oil is both anti-viral and anti-fungal, the husk can be used to make an alcohol tincture to help reinvigorate the elderly and a tea from the husk is helpful in stopping diarrhea, the shells can be used as gas masks and make awesome luau tops.
this info is from "les plantes et les legumes d'haiti qui guerissent, volume II" by brutus and pierre-noel
*thanks to the awesome kid with the big hair who calls me mom for the pics
**note to the chicken running around the yard: you are SO lucky that i've just started sprinting.
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