I made the most delicious smoothie this morning. Though places like Jamba Juice, Surf City Squeeze, and non-chain coffee shops provide really tasty fruity blended drinks to perfection, there's nothing more gratifying that doing it yourself. I should also mention, when making ANYTHING at home, you get to choose what goes into what you're making. This morning's smoothie was the most satisfying because I cracked a coconut open and used the milk as the base for my strawberry-banana smoothie. I've been known to down a smoothie nearly as fast as I'm capable of downing a glass of water after a long bike ride, but today I savored it. I gave Abbi a bit to taste since she helped me open the coconut and she agreed: pretty damn delicious.
After a few sips of my smoothie, I looked at the shell of the coconut and wondered just how I'd get the meat from the fruit. I went to YouTube, my trusty ally in most how-to scenarios. Unfortunately, my impatience and excitement won over reason and I decided that I'd just figure it out as I went. I started by scraping the meat with a fork. I certainly was getting shaved coconut, my desired outcome but at the rate I was going it would take me the full two hours I had before leaving for work to finish. Other ideas came to me and I messed around (quite literally: the table, counter and sink were covered in hairy shavings and coconut scraped bits) until I had some semblance of order. My technique helped me produce the most amount of edible coconut bits and the least amount of waste (that I could manage with the tools I was using).
As I used a spoon to pry parts of the coconut from it's shell, I thought: "This probably isn't the way anyone else would do this" "If someone saw me right know they'd laugh to high heaven" ... I was grateful that Abbi had left for the day and Jenny and James had decided to take a mid-morning nap; I was able to do whatever I pleased without anyone leaning over my shoulder. It was almost therapeutic, my method. It reminded me of how I choose to de-seed pomegranates. Certainly there are easier ways with less potential of staining various surfaces in the process, but I still choose to pull each individual seed away from it's skin, it's connection to the whole.
I'm reading The Fountainhead right now and I couldn't help but compare my fruit disassembling processes to the sketch assembly process Roark is known for. He's takes pride in his work even if it's not popular or liked at all. He refuses to do work that he knows he would be ashamed of. I like those ideals, they're quite similar to what I learned at a young age. When we had chores to do, my sister and I would often cut corners to get things done faster so we'd be able to head outside to play with our friends. When Mom would check to see what we'd done we'd often times have to re-do our task simply because it wasn't done up to her expectations. As a ten-year-old it was annoying to have to do something to someone else's standards; I didn't understand why Mom wouldn't just do the vacuuming herself if she had a particular way she wanted it done, but unlike my sister, after a bunch of times having to re-do my chores, I started doing them well, meticulously well.
Later I learned that nearly every task I'd have to accomplish would have to be done (in some way or another) to please and sometimes appease another. That realization sucked, but I'm glad that I was raised to accomplish a task that I'd want to sign my name to. There's no reward in doing things the easy way simply because it's the easiest. Tasks should be accomplished in a manner that produces the most satisfaction, the most gratification. Rarely, if ever are the two one and the same and I don't really mind that at all. I like challenges, I like to push myself and I don't mind getting dirty to get the job done.
So anyway, I've got some really strange looking coconut "shavings" and bits in a container that I'll bring to work today. I'll have what Gramps calls a "shit-eating" grin on my face while I snack on my coconut as I read more of The Fountainhead during my break.
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