I make meusli.  And in a country where coconuts are such a bountiful product, I’ve grown tired of having to buy imported shredded coconut to add to it.  Despite the prevelence of coconuts, I have yet to see shredded (flaked) coconut for baking and making cereals. 

At the talad – market – I can find fresh coconut milk, in which the coconut ends up in pieces as fine as snowflakes before being pressed to extract the liquid.  Snowflakes are too fine for my needs.

At first I looked for a gradtai – rabbit – a bench-like contraption (often artistically designed to look like a rabbit) with a sharp blade protuding like buck teeth on which you scrape the halved coconut.  Well-patinaed gradtai are collectors’ items and Tawn has indicated an interest in having one around the house.

Regardless of its decorative value, I want a gradtai to scrape coconuts.  Kobfa and I mentioned this to Ajarn Yai last week and it resulted in an after school trip to the local talad because she insisted that we could find the right implement to scrape coconut. 

In addition to finding a tiikuudmapraaw – literarly “coconut scraper” (left) – of which Ajarn Yai insisted to buy two, one for Tawn and one for me (she still doesn’t quite get it despite multiple explanations in both Thai and English), we found a vendor who sells gradtai. 

But these gradtai were functional ones, plain wooden benches with no visual relationship to a rabbit.  I called Tawn on my mobile phone and asked if he wanted a plain gradtai.  Silly me for even asking; of course he didn’t.

I drove back last week with two tiikuudmapraaw and a hulled coconut that Khruu Somchai had harvested from a tree near at the school.  Ajarn Yai was worried that it was a young coconut, which has a lot of liquid inside and only a thin lining of meat.  That coconut is still sitting, whole, on my counter because I lack a way to open it.

This week as the school day was concluding, Ajarn Yai insisted I wait a few extra minutes because Khruu Somchai and Khruu Darunee were at the market buying a mature coconut for me.  Ajarn Yai had been worried all week that young coconut just isn’t the right thing for me.  When they returned, everyone took turns husking the coconut.  

The coconuts you see at markets in the west are just a small part of the whole coconut – you wouldn’t believe how thick a husk is!  What person thousands of years ago thought it would be worth the effort to rip apart a coconut and see if there was something to eat inside?

I drove back from Bangkhonthii this week with a hulled and halved mature coconut.  This morning I used one of my tiikuudmapraaw to scrape the coconut, making beautiful flakes – loads of them! – that I toasted in the oven on the balcony.   Coconut cream pie, anyone?