The Putrid Coconut

Yesterday, I blogged about my new pumpkin pie recipe.  See here.  I mentioned that I bought a whole coconut to use for the "shaved coconut" that tops the pie.  I also said that we would have my dad open it since he's an expert.  However, when Tim read that in my blog, he decided to look up videos on youtube about how to open a coconut.  By the way, there are some interesting ways to open a coconut...one involved using your teeth.

We did not use our teeth, but hit Tim the Tool Man's tool box for a hammer and screwdriver.  First, we poked holes in the "eyes" of the coconut.  This should have been a clue when we didn't smell that yummy sweet coconut milk.  It was a tiny bit smelly.  I haven't opened a coconut before, so I thought, "hey, maybe that's what it's supposed to smell like."

We poked out all three "eyes" and then let the coconut water drain out.  It smelled a little like coconut but not so much.  Even Kona wasn't that interested in it.

After the coconut water was drained out, Tim started tapping around the outside of the coconut.  Apparently, this tapping is supposed to make the coconut crack open into two halves.

Unfortunately, we did not get two halves...  The skin of the coconut peeled right off, which is absolutely not supposed to happen.  It smelled horrid...disgusting...foul...  And yet, Tim still thought, maybe the coconut is good in the middle.  So he sliced it open.  That was when we hit putrid.  Both of us were gagging and dry heaving. 

I was frantically trying to find a plastic bag to put the putrid coconut in so it could be disposed of.  I'm pretty sure our trash can will smell like putrid coconut all winter long.

So, needless to say, we did not have coconut on our ginger pumpkin pie.  I also learned that apparently, you can't trust a coconut to be fresh and yummy.  Oh, and that rotten coconuts smell absolutely AWFUL.