Co-co-coconut

I was going to write about ... something, I can't remember what but then I read a post on Tammy's blog about coconut and decided I'd do a short post too.

Tammy was extolling the virtue of coconut oil as a face cream. As a teenager I used coconut oil as a sun tan lotion. Or maybe more accurately as a sun burn lotion. You could buy it in solid form in pots in the chemist. I'd buy a pot and take it to the beach where I had to wait for it to melt before I could apply it. We didn't know about the sun and skin cancer in those days. But it was good for a tan.

I only recently - well, comparatively recently as in the last few years - discovered that I liked to eat coconut. I'd always refused to try a Bounty bar or cakes with jam and coconut on the top. Today I love coconut cake and use it in all sorts of things. 

On holiday in Vietnam Husband and I were 'conned' into buying a fresh coconut drink each. You know what it's like. The seller says, 'Here, try carrying this yoke. You want a photo, don't you? Let me take a photo of you. Now you really want a cool drink, don't you?' What can you say? And he was very pleasant and the drink was refreshing. If not a trifle expensive.

But best of all is the scent of coconut. And even though we don't live on a tropical island it's still possible to be out walking on a warm sunny day and suddenly get a whiff of coconut. Follow it to its source and you'll find our very traditional wild shrub, gorse, its yellow flowers perfumed with the scent of coconut. Or I suppose more accurately the smell of gorse which happens to be the same as that of coconut.