My son wanted to buy a coconut. We bought one a couple of days ago. He wanted to open it tonight.
I read about the coconut “water” that is inside the coconut. It is supposed to be really good for you to drink.
Hubby got a drill and drilled two holes in the coconut and we poured out the water. We strained it because it had parts of the shell in it. I poured it into two small glasses and we drank it. It was sweet and tasted like coconut.
Then hubby hit the coconut with a hammer and broke it in half. My son didn’t want to ruin the shell so I cut out the coconut. It was really hard to pry away from the shell. It took a long time to free the coconut meat from the hard shell. Then I cut off the hard covering. The coconut white part is thick and not real soft. I didn’t really like the taste of it right out of the shell. I tried shredding it on a metal shredder but it was not real easy to do. It took a long time to get all the white coconut out of the shell, peel it and shred it. I then got out my food processor. I put some pieces of coconut in it and turned it on. It did a great time chopping it up. I then put it in a pan and warmed it up until it lightly toasted. It greatly improves the flavor to do that. I only did one half of the coconut. I am hoping my son forgets about the other half. It is a lot of work, just to eat some coconut.  I think it is easier to just buy it all shredded.  I would love to see how they get it from the shell to the bag on “How it’s made.” 

I once was on a cruise that went to Hawaii.  I went to a Polynesian show and they had coconuts that they just slammed into a stick in the ground.  They opened them like they were so easy.  Then they let us taste it.  The coconuts they had were so sweet and good.  They tasted way better than the ones you buy in the store.  Maybe because they were fresher.  On that same trip, we stopped off at Bora Bora.  I went on a four wheel drive trip, that I paid for on the ship.  It was a wild four wheel drive trip, going up dirt roads, that were deep rutted and muddy and slippery.  Sometimes we even got stuck, but the next vehicle came along and pushed out out, so we could continue.  We came upon a pineapple grove.  The guy stopped and walked over and chopped off a pineapple that was growing.  He sliced it open and cut it up for us to eat. 

That was the best tasting pineapple I have ever tasted.  It tasted like nothing that we get in the store.  It was so sweet and delicious.  I guess fresh cut pineapple is much better tasting than the ones that we get.  I could get used to eating that pineapple all the time, if I lived there. 

The guide said on that trip, “Do you know what we call Bora Bora?”  We said “NO”.  He said they call it Boring Boring.  It was funny.  He lives in paradise and thinks it is boring.  The water was beautiful turquoise in color. ”  I guess there was not much to do, but it would be nice to stay there for a month and eat pineapple every day.

We took a drive around town last night and discovered some Christmas decorations at a park and they had some cute displays on water.

I am going to cook Lobster tails tomorrow night.  We don’t go out on New Year’s Eve.  But since it is the last day of the year, I wanted a nice dinner.

Lobster Tail, dipped in hot butter.  I think I will make some rolls.  I saw a recipe from the Food Wishes chef that he posted.  It is Foodwishes.com.  Baked potatoes would be yummy.  I bought some frozen Lava cakes.  Never tried them, but they look good.  Anyway, i hope everyone has a safe and wonder New Year’s Eve. 

Remember…….don’t drink and drive.

Well to continue on with my vacation.

The weather warmed up the last 2 days we were in Florida.  It got to 80 degrees F. 

We rode our bikes a lot, for miles.

We rode about 8 miles a day.  It is at 0 altitude,(sea level)  so it was nice and flat. 

We drove to Orlando, Downtown Disney to go to the Lego Store.  My son begged us to go.  It was a 3 hour drive there.  But we did promise him we would go.  They have a new restaurant there called T-Rex.  There is all these dinosaurs moving around, well moving their head and making noise.  Every once in a while the place would rumble.

The place was packed.  The waiters were carrying out massive amounts of food.

It was expensive though.  A chicken pot pie costs $18.99.

I wanted one, but I was not going to pay $19 for a pot pie.  I got an appetizer for $11, it was 3 tiny hamburgers.  It cost $59 for lunch in that place.  I will never go back.  They triple the prices because of the location.  The food was really good though, but expensive. 

I got a coffee mug in the Disney store.  It has a Mickey Mouse on it with my initial C.  There were lots of people in the stores, all buying souvenirs.  Little girls were in the beauty shop getting their hair done up like a princess.  They would pull it up and put it up in a bun and put shiny glitter in their hair.  They you buy them a princess gown for $60 and they can look like a princess.

We ate out at a catfish restaurant.  I had shrimp and catfish.  It was delicious.  My son ordered a plate of gator.  It tastes like chicken, but it is chewy and tough and has an awful texture. 

I took a picture of it.  Yes it is alligator meat. 

We did see a real live alligator in a creek at the State park we camped at.

The days it got hot, was the days the biting bugs came out.  I think they are called no see-ums.  They bite and make you itch like crazy.

I have about 50 bug bites.  They hurt so bad.  I keep putting itch cream on them, but it does not help.  I don’t think I will ever go back to Florida because of the bugs that bite.  I itch from my head to my toes.  They bit my head, my arms, my neck, my legs.  It was awful.

Other than that, we had a great time.

I do love the beach and watching the waves in the ocean.

My son is off school for winter break.  We packed up our travel trailer and went to Florida.

We stayed at a state park near Hobe Sound, Fl.  It is right beside Jupiter, Fl. 

It cooled off when we were down there at first.  It was 60 in the daytime.  A little cold for the beach.  We took our bikes and there were wonderful bike paths to ride on. 

We went to the beach.  The beach is kind of steep and the wind was blowing so the waves were a little rough.  It did warm up the day before Christmas.  It got in the 80’s.  We went to the beach but there was 2 flags up.  A red one, which means strong wind and a purple one, which means danger creatures.  I asked the life guard about that.  He said “Do not go into the water because there are Portuguese Man o’ War, all over the beach and the water. 

They look like plastic bubbles, they are a really pretty color.  If you step on them, they can sting you really bad too. 

There were some people swimming in the water.  These two guys came up to use their body boards.  One had fins, the other one didn’t.  Just as they were about to go into the water, the life guard blew his whistle.  He yelled, “NO FINS, NO BOARDING!”  So the guy ran over to the life guard and talked to him.  The life guard loaned the guy a pair of fins.  The guy goes over to the water and sits down and puts on one fin.  Then a wave washed over him and he dropped the other fin.  The wave took off with the fin.  The guy was trying to get the fin but he could not see it.  The life guard ran over and jumped in the water and got his fin that was floating off.  He walked over to the guy who lost it.  He demanded his other fin back and walked over to us.  We were sitting there watching the whole thing.  The life guard was nice looking, all tan and fit. He looked like he should have been on the TV show Baywatch.  He said “I never loan out my fins, but I felt sorry for the guy, and then he almost lost them.  I will never loan them out again.”  We look out and the one with fins in floundering, holding on to his body board.  He was right in front of a bunch of people that were fishing.  “I just hope I don’t have to go save that idiot.” the life guard said.  He said that a lot of people get in trouble body boarding.  He said so many children drown on them because they fall off and get sucked under or out to sea. 

Then he went back to his station, blowing his whistle at people.  I could not hear what he was yelling at them about.  Then the guy with the body board and no fins walked by.  He told us his brother was out there with the body board.  It was his first time and he had not clue on what to do on it.  He was way to far out to surf the waves that were coming in. 

We said “Just walk down the beach until he could not see the life guard and do whatever he wanted to do.   He went over and sat down on his body board a long time, watching his brother hang onto his body board and kick his feet in the water.  He finally came out of the water and they walked down the beach, till we no longer saw them.

I have more pictures, but it is time to go to bed.  I will post more tomorrow.  Hope you had a great Christmas.

My hubby said “Decorate the tree, or I am going to throw it out.”

I watched a TV show last night and this guy was mad at his children for burning their couch, so he picked up the Christmas tree and drug it outside. 

I got the tree at the Dollar General Store last month.  It was $20.  I used to stick $20 in the slots in Vegas all the time.  It is amazing how fast $20 can dissappear in those slot machines.   They eat the money more than they pay out. 

I thought “Wow, such a deal.”  I came home with it and put it together.  It was scrawny.  I checked out the nice fake trees at Sam’s Club and K-Mart and Wal-Mart.  They want $100 and up, mostly Up, Lowes had expensive ones.  I will wait to see if any go on sale after Christmas.  I wrapped a long piece of garland around the middle part to hind the bare parts.  I put lots of lights and ornaments all over it.  Decorated….it looks Ok.  I like that there is room at the bottom to hang my giant ornaments.  My husband says “It has big balls.” 

I made a 2009 ornament.  I printed out a picture of my son

on card stock and cut it out and glued it on.  I think I made it too big because it didn’t lay real flat on the round ornament, so I got some creases while pushing it down on the ornament.  I put white glue on the back and then a couple of coats of white Elmers glue on top of the picture.  It dries clear.  Then I took gold puff paint and painted all around the picture.

I cooked the pork shoulder.  I put it in my big cast iron pot, I think it is a 6 qt.  It is covered in porcelain.  I trimmed a lot of the fat off.  One whole side is covered in fat, so I cut that off the best I could.  It still has a lot of fat all through it, but it melts off.  I put a little bit of water in the pan.  You don’t need to do that.  I started cooking it on 250F degrees.  I turned it on about 10PM.  At 4:oo am, I got up to check it.  You could smell it cooking all over the house.  I tried taking it out to the garage, but the plugs didn’t work out there.  I guess something out there tripped the breaker.  So I carried it all back into the kitchen.  I opened the pot.  It had a lot a liquid in it.  The pot was half full of liquid.  I took a lot of the liquid out.  All that fat melts and makes liquid.  I put the pot back in the Nesco and turned the temp down to 225F.  I cooked it until about 10:30 AM the next morning, so it cooked for 12 hours.  I put on rubber gloves and took the pork out of the pot and pulled it all apart and threw away the fat parts.  Shred it up with a fork.  It is fall apart tender.  It turned out really good. 

I put it on toasted bread and poured on BBQ sauce.  I think it

would be better on a bun next time.  You end up with a lot  of meat.

I have been watching Food Network, and they go to a lot of B-B-Q places and they say they all slow cook the pork shoulder.  Now I know how to make some good homemade pulled pork sandwiches.

I have had my fake Christmas tree sitting in the living room, sitting there, undecorated for a week. I told my husband to bring in the boxes of decorations from the garage. Now they are sitting there. I bought this tree at Dollar General for $20. It is 6 feet tall and kind of puny. We have a big one out in the garage…..but it takes up a lot of room and takes forever to decorate……so I just got this small one. I just have not had the urge to decorate. I kind of have a little tradition that I do. I take a glass ball ornament and I write the year on it and I take a picture of my son and I print it out and glue it on the ornament and then put sparkles on it. I want him to have an ornament for each year, so when he grows up, he can see what he looked like when he was small. My Mom never did anything like that for us. Heck, I remember that she would give us socks and underwear and pajamas as Christmas presents. Imagine getting all excited about opening up a present and finding socks…..oh whoop. I don’t do that for my son. I buy him socks whenever he needs them. They are not a present, they are something you need, like toilet tissue, you need that, and you would never wrap that up as a present.

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I watched this video of this chef making B-B-Q pork. He takes a big pork shoulder and cooks it very low, 210 F  in an iron pot for 12 hours. Then it is so tender and just falls apart, then he pours on b-b-q sauce and puts it on a bun. I went to the grocery store today and bought a big pork shoulder. I brought down my Nesco cooker from upstairs and trimmed off a lot of the fat on the pork  and put steak seasoning on it and a little B-B-Q sauce on it and put it in this big iron pot I have. I am going to cook it for 12 hours. I didn’t do the liquid smoke in mine. I just don’t like smoke taste.  It was on sale for 99 cents a pound, so it cost me $6.
Actually it is working out fine without my stove. I bought a toaster oven that also is an oven and it has a fan so it is a convection oven. It works really good, but I was afraid to leave that on for 12 hours, so I got out the Nesco. 

I will take a picture of the pork after it is cooked tomorrow.  Keeping my fingers crossed that it comes out good.

It was cold this morning. I looked at the temperature, it was 31F degrees. A frost covered the grass. Car windows were all covered in ice. I drove to the lake down the street and took pictures. I like this one. The grass is all frosty.

My husband is ripping out the rest of our kitchen cabinets. We have one wall left to do. The stove area. He took out the stove top and the cabinets around the stove top. I had to unpack all the drawers and cabinets. The trick is, finding a place to put all the stuff that was in the cabinets. Spices and cooking utensils. Pots and pans. Then he asked me to cook dinner last night. I got out my electric skillet and cooked hamburgers. I plugged in an electric coil cook plate. I put a griddle on it and buttered the buns to toast them. It seemed like it took forever to toast, so I turned it up and went back to cooking the hamburgers. Then the buns burned. They were ruined. The burgers were done, so I threw the buns in the sink and we ate the burgers on cold buns. I have to get used to cooking on those hot plates.

We went to this lake near Chattanooga, TN at Thanksgiving to go camping. It was cold at night. It was 37 F degrees. We were going to go fishing so we bought some worms. We went to the wooden pier, see picture.
It was cold and windy. Too cold to fish. Our trailer worked out great. We went to Publix. It was a new grocery store about 12 miles away from the campground. We bought a pumpkin pie. We also got a pumpkin cake roll at Wal-Mart. We tasted the pumpkin cake roll. It was awful. The cake part was so dry and hard, it was hard to slice. It must have been made a few months ago and frozen and thawed out for the holiday. Took one bite and threw it in the trash. In the morning, an animal dug in the trash can outside. The pumpkin roll box was on the ground. He tore up the pumpkin cake roll, but it looked like he left it all. Even the “raccoon” unknown animal didn’t like it.  I also tried the pumpkin pie, it was awful too, threw that away too, so that was a dismal desert experience.  For dinner, I had some chicken breast, I poured a can of cream of chicken soup over the chicken and baked it in the oven.  It was good.  We just stayed for 2 days.  Oh on Friday, we went to Wal-Mart at about 9 am to see if there was anything left on Black Friday sale.  The TV we wanted was gone.  I got a $2 dvd movie.  I got a mixer for $4, I got it for the trailer.  We got two coats for $7 each.

There was no line, which was amazing.  We then went to Target.  Just one word for that place PACKED.  There were so many people.  The store was wall to wall people.  The lines went all the way back to the end of the store and curved around the isles.  People had shopping carts over flowing.  We left.  Even if I saw something I wanted, I would not stand in line for hours.  That is just nuts. 

Oh…..I got a great buy on things when I got home.  I stopped at Dollar General.  They had a MP3 player 2 Gig for $12.  I bought one for my son and put on some music for him.  It sounded great.  I went back today and it was still on sale, it is a 3 day sale on that.  I bought me one too.  I spent a few hours with all my music cd’s, putting on songs onto my MP3 player.  I love it.   I also got a micro scope for my son too.  It was on sale for $10.   I bought some Lady Gaga songs.  I love her music.

I was in Ace Hardware store. My husband was getting something in the back of the store. I was standing near the front. I started looking at all the Christmas decorations. They had these cute little buildings. Old time burger and soda shops, barns, train station and the ones in the picture. I wanted one. I told my husband “I just want one and then next year I will buy another one.” I got this one that was a tackle and bait shop. It has little chains on posts and rope and a little boat and a fishing pole. When we paid for it, it was on sale for $15, regular price was $25. Such a deal. We went back and got another one, a Bakery one. (On the left in the picture.)  We put them on the mantle and plugged them in.  They are neat to look at, all lit up.  Then I saw the Toy Shoppe at Wal-Mart, so I got that one too.  It was $15.  

Now we have 3.  I got some little trees and a bench and some people.  Home Depot had a pack of those.   I want more.

I bought some rum yesterday.  I was watching the Food Network channel and I had on the show of Sandra Lee, the semi homemade one.  She had on a lady who was making a rum cake.  I decided to make one, so I went to the store and got a yellow cake mix and one box of vanilla pudding mix.  I went to the liquor store and said “I need some rum to make a rum cake.”  He said, “Well if you make it, you have to give me a piece.”  I got a bottle of Bacardi gold rum. 

The lady on TV put in 1 cup of rum, well 1/2 cup in the mix and then made a glaze with 1/2 cup of rum and some butter.  She poked holes all over the cake and poured it all over the bottom and then turned it over and poked holes all over the top and poured the glaze all over the top.  I don’t know if I will use that much rum on my cake.  That is an awful lot of rum.  I would probably get drunk on that cake, since I don’t ever drink.  Well maybe once a year, I will have a Margarita. 

I will take pictures when I make it, maybe even make a video of it…….maybe.