Coco y nopal from the backyard

I stayed at B2 all day today, mostly recovering from yesterday.  But I still had a couple of cool experiences!

B2's neighbour, Al, is all about eating produce from his tropical back yard.  Given that he shares his backyard with B2,he shared some of his harvest and knowledge with us.

Cactus was the first item on the menu.  Al was cutting some to fry with scrambled eggs.  When I asked, he told me it's best to use the young and tender leaves and showed me how to cut off the spines, which are soft and cute on the young leaves. He also said you can just chop up cactus and add it to a salad.  I've had marinated cactus before. But today, I ate a chunk pretty much straight from the plant!  It tastes "green". 

The Al got busy harvesting coconuts.  He told us that a young coconut contains mostly water, which converts to the white meat that lines the inside of the nut.  And that the gelly like "meat" is young meat that will harden with time. Wikipedia told me that coconuts take about one year to fully ripen.  Who knew?!!!  Wikipedia also says that the hardened white meat is called "copra", and you can extract coconut oil from that.

Photos
1) Some of the coconuts we harvested
2) A young cactus leaf
3) Boxx, he's such a cutie!!!
4) A VW Beetle that's been converted to a sugar can press.  Look carefully at the tires.  It hasn't moved in a while....