COCONUT WATER GOOD FOR YOU, DAUGHTER

When I was a little girl we had three coconut trees in our yard. One was very short, one was medium tall and the last seemed super tall to my eight year old eyes.

The shortest of the coconut trees bore coconuts with a slightly pinkish hue on the top of its exterior shell and on the inside. Of all the coconuts we had these were my favorites. There are many strains of coconut trees and for my taste the ones with the pinkish hue which are very rare are the most delicious. I love the cool sweetness and just slightly salty flavor of the coconut water, especially as it always made me feel cool on hot sunny island days. But it was those that held that edible, delicious soft jelly that were my favorite kind of coconuts.

One very hot day, when I was a child, I remembered being very thirsty and wanting to have a long drink of coconut water. There wasn’t anyone to climb the tree to pick one for me, so I decided I would climb the tree myself. I was scared of falling and breaking my long neck, or my bony arms and legs. I knew if I did get hurt my dad would be super angry with me for doing such a foolish thing. But, I wanted coconut water to drink; and no amount of yelling from daddy was going to stop me now. Also he wasn’t at home to stop me from climbing the tree. The tom-boy inside me said “ah, you can do it.” Of course even at that age I thought I could do anything a boy could do. I wanted coconut water and I was going to have it.

I wrapped my legs and arms as much as I could around the tree, pulled my legs up as if I was sitting so that my bottom stuck out and started climbing up the tree. I wanted to lock my legs and my hands tight together so that I wouldn’t fall, but they were too short to meet each other, and so I kept slipping back down to the ground. I was determined however; and somehow I stopped thinking about falling and began focusing on the cool water of the coconut. I moved onto the tree, scooted down to the bottom of the tree, bent my knees and sat on the trunk, I wrapped my arms around it as much as I could, lay my face on the side of the trunk and began pushing myself up with my legs, stretching them out as far and out as long as they would go. When my legs couldn’t stretch any more, I would hold on tight with my arms, pull my legs up again, squeezing my legs and knees tight to the tree trunk and push myself up some more. I kept doing this until I came to the top with the wiry branches and the green coconut shells.  As I got to the coconuts, I held on tight with my legs and with my right hand; I pulled really hard on the coconut with my left hand until it broke away from the bunch and fell to the ground. Feeling really proud of myself, happy and excited, I decided I needed three coconuts, two for me and one for my little sister.

As soon as the coconuts fell to the ground, and feeling quite confident, I scampered down the tree twice as fast as I climbed up. I was so excited about drinking the delicious coconut water and eating the soft jelly that I ran into the kitchen and took one of father’s sharp kitchen knives, and two spoons out to the tree. I set the knife and spoons on the ground and held the coconut tight between my legs. I pushed the point of the knife slowly and carefully into the coconut, and when it pierced through the tough shell, I began sawing a circle around the top. I called my baby sister over who was watching me intently. I sat her down and put the coconut to her mouth for her to drink the water. When she had had enough, I put the coconut between her legs, gave her a spoon so that she could scoop out the jelly from inside the coconut and eat it, and then I began to cut one open for myself. This time I cut it quickly, not too concerned about cutting myself; since I just did it and nothing bad happened. As soon as the coconut was cut through, I pulled the top off, and quickly lifted it up to my head and tilted it to my mouth and began to drink. I guess I lifted it just a bit too quickly because the coconut water streamed not only into my mouth but down my neck, chest, onto my belly and the waist of my shorts. But I wasn’t concerned about that I just wanted to drink until all the water was gone.

I felt so good as I sat under the coconut tree, feeling cool and well pleased with myself as my sister still sitting with her coconut watching me.  After a while I took my sister and her coconut up to the house, and then I returned, picked up the third coconut and the knife and put them in the kitchen. I knew my dad would be happy to have a coconut too, and since I didn't hurt myself, there would be no scolding for me today, so I put the coconut and the knife on the kitchen table for him and put the spoons in the dish pan to be washed.

That memory was part of my reality growing up on my beautiful Montserrat, the Emerald Isle of the Caribbean islands.  I was surrounded by coconut trees reaching tall to the blue skies, the blazing sun, made tolerable by the trade winds with their cooling breezes, and ever present turquoise waters of the Caribbean Sea on one side of the island and the Atlantic Ocean on the other.  

Take a listen to Harry Belafonte as he sings about the pleasures and benefits of the coconut, island style. 

CARIBBEAN HEALING

 

A few weeks ago I began this story by weaving a web of my escapades in moving to the Caribbean. I wanted to find the right place to live by the ocean to get the support I needed to help heal my hypothyroidism. I shared about moving to the sister islands Antigua and Barbuda, and my adventures of finding the perfect home by the sea.

My story of dealing with a slow functioning thyroid changed when I got to the island of Antigua. I wanted to live my life barefoot and carefree. I didn’t want to be slowed down, tired, depressed, over weight and unhappy. These were some of the symptoms I experienced while I was living in New York; before my thyroid slowed down, I lived a fairly vibrant fast paced excited, healthy life and I so desperately wanted to get back to feeling excited about life again, that I would have done anything to live in a place that gave me the opportunity to heal my condition naturally. I knew that the ocean would be the key to my rapid recovery and so living as close to it as possible was the answer was the plan I had in my head. I was determined to settle for nothing less than the perfect place. So you will understand why I became so excited about living in this remote, wilderness by the sea.

Firstly, this island was the exact opposite of my beloved New York, my other favorite place to live outside of the Caribbean. In New York, I find the energy is almost palpable. It is infectious, exciting, and definitely busy, fun and noisy. But in Antigua it is completely different; it is slow and quiet with not a worry in the world, everything is “easy man”, which is how the majority of the natives live; but this hideaway that I found is beyond slow, sometimes I felt as if my thyroids and the slow atmosphere went hand I hand. They both moved slowly, the only difference was the ocean, even though it was slow moving, it was very busy, teeming with all the sea creatures darting about, to and fro going about their lives. This rustic beach front property was ideal for me; it was exactly contrary to my work environment. After interacting with thousands of visiting cruise passengers daily, I needed a sanctuary to relax, release and rejuvenate, and I was blessed in finding this island gem to lay my head, basking in the moonlit sky on the jetty or reveling in the early morning sun light in the calm waters after my dawn meditation, before going off to work on the ocean front on the western side of the island where the many cruise passengers disembarked the ships for a day or two.

Usually when vacationing in the Caribbean I am even more enthusiastic about starting my day, I have people to see who I haven’t seen for a long time, things to do and places to go that are new to me. There are always new undiscovered places on the islands that are waiting to be explored. However this time it was different, taking an early morning walk on the beach or up a hill to stand at the top and watch the gorgeous rejuvenating, spectacular view of where I was now living took much of my will to muster the effort. These are some of the side effects of a slow functioning thyroid.

Sometimes, I felt as though my thyroid was not functioning at all, but my sanctuary suited me in many ways; at night I slept deeply and peacefully to the sound of the waves; in the mornings I meditated on the jetty with the fishes absorbing the minerals from the ocean into my body. And overtime living on the beautiful water front, right on the beach on the edge of the Atlantic Ocean, I began to feel a bit more enthusiastic, a bit more optimistic, a bit more energetic, and a lot happier now that my body was responding to my new life, my new location, living in the middle of nature, surrounded by the tall trees and the sea salt that was absorbed into everything around me. My body just needed me to care for it a differently, and as I increased the length of my morning walks, my daily prayers and meditation on the beach, and swam in the refreshing, rejuvenating Atlantic waters, my energy increased and then I began to pay more attention to my foods. I was eating the foods that were grown around me; these were delicious, fresh picked and helped to boost my thyroids and therefore my metabolism. 

My thyroids began to respond beautifully to my new environment, and being encouraged by the good feeling I was having I began adding sea vegetables and local fruits to my diet. The ocean has many edible treasures to share and minerals are one of its strengths; iron, potassium, manganese, iodine, magnesium, sulfur, sodium, zinc, copper, chromium, are a few of the many minerals produced by the sea. In my quest to change the ways my body was functioning I had found out that my best food friend is is iodine, and figuring out and finding which foods had the highest source of iodine was at the top of the list. So, I began increasing my iodine intake by adding dulse a sea vegetable is that is a potent source that is chock full of iodine. I had been using dulse in New York but here I increased the amounts I was eating and sprinkled the flakes on almost everything I ate. My slow thyroid was iodine deficient and I was determined to give it all the Iodine it needed to help my thyroid glands to produce the levels of hormones to boost my metabolism.

Then I found that the fishermen where harvesting sea moss from the ocean (another sea vegetable that is very high in iodine) and so I began adding the sea moss to my delicious sour sop (a fruit), which I watched everyday as it grew larger and ripened soft and sweet on the tree to make my smoothie. There papaya tree laden with fresh ripe fruits and so I would add them to make my papaya mango smoothie. There was avocado, tomato, papaya, mango salad with a sea moss cilantro dressing. I knew that I ate these fruits and vegetables that had absorbed these mineral from the sea and the earth, then my body was absorbing these minerals on a daily basis, and so I as I continued to add the foods that I love from the garden along with those from the sea, my body began to shift even more, the depression that was clouding my attitude, began to dissipate and I became enthusiastic about my life again. I began to participate more with my family and friends and found myself contributing more to my environment, creating wellness workshops and seminars and I became more innovative in my thinking and more creative in my actions.

  Pick up your free iodine rich recipe at http://festivepalate.com/2013/06/05/mango-papaya-avocado-salad-with-cilantro-sea-moss-dressing/