Coco-what? Errrr.

One thing I love about Brazil far beyond its typical culinary pleasures is the great wealth of palm trees that dot its landscape. Palm trees are so alien in appearance, with their smooth gangly looking trunks and top hat of green foliage. Aside from the lovely way that a sea breeze glides through its fronds, dancing hither and to with a soft leisurely whisper, the palm tree’s greatest attribute is its hard coconut shell—one of the best drinks that nature has to offer. In Salvador, coconut vendors dot the beach side, selling their lot at R$ 1 a piece. The coconuts are often chilled, heavy with juice, and are prepared for the consumer with a few quick swats of a machete. After a morning jog, a work out on the shore, or perhaps a quick dip in the sea, few pleasures can rival the implicit “awww” of coconut water slurped greedily through a straw.

As a make-shift anthropologist, a quasi-explorador, a space monkey that goes where no monkey has gone before, I feel that it is my job to embrace my new cultural surroundings. If this means saturating my life with coconut products then so be it. I now wash my clothes, my dishes, my motorcycle with coconut soap. I eat coconut cake, chew coconut gum, and drink coconut yogurt for a hold over between meals. Last week, I put coconut milk in my pizza dough, and today, made a kind of coconut tomato pasta, enough to rival the best of any Thai or Indian cuisine.

While I certainly miss my fast American favorites, my burritos, and hamburgers, and butter finger bars, at least in the void of such things I have my new best friend, the coconut, to carry my way.