I spent a couple of summers in the Bay Islands of Honduras, and saw coconuts used in a lot of ways. For green coconuts, they chopped off the top with a machete....didn't remove the outer husk first, tho. Inside, the immature coconut was all a sweetish jelly.....as it matures, it forms the harder white "meat" inside the shell. When they opened a mature coconut, they poured the liquid into a bowl, then scraped the meat from inside the shell with a tool made from an old car spring......fastened to a board. They rasped the meat out of the shell, wrapped the scrapings in a piece of the almost fabric-like stuff that grows around the palm trees, and twisted it to squeeze the thicker juice out of the meat. This, mixed with the first liquid was what they called coconut milk. The solids were given to the chickens and pigs, unless someone wanted it for cookies or bread........... Then someone fetched a conch out of the little wire pen they kept in the bay, removed it from its shell, pounded the meat on the dock planks with the back side of a machete blade, then cut it up, dropped it into a bowl and squeezed lime juice over it. For supper, the conch meat went into a pot, with the lime juice, a little water was added to boil it a few minutes, then the coconut milk was added. Absolute heaven to eat. The lime juice gave it a perfume that should be worth millions of dollars. Preparing meals in primitive conditions can be an all-day affair..........seems to me they added yucca root, or potatoes to the conch stew too, but I don't remember exactly................ [log in to unmask] Walk The Path With Practical Feet! ________________________________________________________________ GET INTERNET ACCESS FROM JUNO! Juno offers FREE or PREMIUM Internet access for less! Join Juno today! For your FREE software, visit: http://dl.www.juno.com/get/web/.