Dreaming of coconuts
I grew up on buko juice. We had three coconut trees growing beside my grandparents’ house and it was only a matter of having someone climb up to pluck the buko when we wanted buko juice. Actually, there’s a story behind the coconut trees.
My father had a basketball court constructed on an empty portion of the property beside my grandparents’ house which was next to ours. That was where my brother and I learned the rudiments of basketball, volleyball and badminton. When I was in the third grade, or somewhere thereabouts, someone told my grandmother about a strain called “dwarf coconuts”. Supposedly, they would only reach a maximum height of six feet or so. My grandmother bought three and, over my father’s objections, had holes dug into the concrete court to accommodate her dwarf coconuts. Needless to say, the newly-planted and very young trees would get hit every time my brother and I played ball. My grandmother would scream from the second floor veranda of their house, calling out to my mother to make us to stop playing ball. I remember that, one time, I was so upset that I tried to pull out the coconut trees from the soil—with my bare hands. I hurt my hands, naturally, and my mother had to drag me, literally—kicking, screaming and in tears—back to the house.
Fast forward to ummmm around two decades later. I was a mother of two young girls and, from my in-laws house in Quezon City, we moved to my old family home which offered more space and lots of grounds for the kids to run around and ride their bikes in. The three “dwarf coconuts” were about 15 feet high. But the buko had remained as it was when I was a kid—smaller than the ones you’d find in the markets but with the sweetest juice. There was no need to add sugar at all. In short, it was the buko itself that was the dwarf, not the blasted tree. My daughters loved those coconuts—meat and juice. They learned to scoop out the meat from the husk and drink the juice with it.
About two or three years later, as my daughters spent more and more time playing outdoors, and as we found it more and more difficult to get somebody to climb up to pluck the coconuts from the trees, my grandmother had them cut down fearing that the unplucked mature coconuts would fall down and hit my kids. I kinda thought that it was just the irrational fear that old people are often prone to but they were her trees and it was her decision.
That was long ago. My daughters are 14 and 12 (almost 13, actually) and we live today in a suburb where there are more pine trees than coconut trees. When we want buko juice, we have to buy fresh coconuts from the market. When we eat out and the restaurant offers fresh buko juice—in husks, not in glasses—we almost always take advantage of the opportunity.
Above, a coconut tree growing beside the parking lot of Shopwise Antipolo. Below, a coconut from a freshly-delivered batch when we had lunch at the Bulawan Floating Restaurant.
Above and below, fresh coconut juice which my husband and I enjoyed recently with our barbeque and java rice at the Three Sisters’ Restaurant at Barrio Kapitolyo in Pasig City.
If we ever get the chance to buy another house with grounds for a larger garden, perhaps, I’ll plant my own coconut trees. I will remember, however, that the term “dwarf” refers to the fruit rather than the tree. And I will not ruin my kids’ playground to give way to my trees.
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Comments
12 Responses to “Dreaming of coconuts”
Hayy very refreshing even just looking at your pictures.
I love buko juice ever since I was a kid. I associate it with peaceful & innocent times.
Nanay used to take me along for her novena on Wednesdays & on the way home, she would always buy buko from those carts parked outside the church.
Alam mo yun? Yung may mama na nagtitilad na mabilis tapos ang pang-scoop nya carabao horn (daw) tapos everything comes out clean then dumped into a plastic & I’m given a straw I can push thru the meat.
After the juice is gone, I gobble everything up in the tricycle making sure it’s all gone by the time we’re home. Ayokong i-share sa mga kapatid ko hehe
auee, i remember the first time we took our kids to Rizal’s house in Calamba. We had to wait until it opened. It was so hot that day and the kids, still in pre-school at the time, were withering under the sun. Wala naman masilungan. Even inside the car, it was hot. So we were there beside the car which was parked on the street and a buko vendor came along pushing his cart. I think we finished 6 buko while waiting. hehehe The kids learned to use a “sharpened” piece of husk as a spoon to scoop out the buko meat.
Gosh! I would love to have a drink of Philippine buko juice right now! They sell buko here from the Caribean or Mexico- and they taste weird to me. I only appreciated what we have in the Philippines when I left. Mapapa-uwi ako sa wala sa oras, kakatingin eh.
LOL KK, it’s after midnight here in the Philippines and I’m still thinking of buko juice.
Hi Connie,
My mouth waters when i saw the coconut.I miss eating young coconut and the juice one of my favourites.
I remember back home in PI,we have lots of coconut plants in our property and i can remember one mid afternoon i was so thirsty that i felt coconut juice for a drink.I wasn’t allowed to climbed on the coconut tree because they (nanay&tatay)frightened of me fallen off the tree.Nobody’s home when i got home so i decided to get one coconut for myself.A bit scary up there high on the tree like a monkey.Man, i did enjoyed it!I was scolded when my parents found out but its late i’ve already eaten and drunk the juice.hehehe…
i only get to enjoy buko pag nasa Bicol kami. My auntie, who is the district engr in sorsogon, bought a few hectares of land there and plans to convert it to a family resort. It has 2 fishponds now, with bangus and alimasag and lots and lots of coconut trees. all we have to do is ask somebody to climb and fresh boko juice we can enjoy the whole day.
in manila, you have to buy talaga sa market pa, tapos mahal pa.and sometimes, yung matigas na ang ibibigay sa iyo……
i make it a point to drink buco juice esp pag nasobrahan ng inom, kasi magaling sya pang-cleanse.
Oh my God!uhaw tuloy ako.It’s winter over here and I would always dream of being in the Phils. having lunch na inihaw na fish with realy cold buko juice.I have only seen coconut juice in cans at the Asean stores.Iba talaga Pinoy food,
organic pa.
LOL Gena, some craving you had that day, huh?
Brenda, actually, our old house where my grandmother had those “dwarf” coconut trees was in Metro Manila. In Caloocan City, to be more precise. We felt lucky because we could enjoy coconuts straight off the tree right in the middle of the city. Simple pleasures that get more and more rare as cities and populations grow. you’re lucky you have that property in bicol to escape to when the city gets suffocating.
binky, “lunch na inihaw na fish with realy cold buko juice”
ahhhh my favorite meal on the beach. Tapos yung fish bagong huli pa. Mmmmm…
Sassy,
Hehe..I couldn’t believe your grandmother would plant those 3 dwarf trees into the concrete court. it could have been moved to the side.
i love sweet buko juice. buko is in abundance in my province until the recent typhoon totally wiped it out…thus, no buko for the next three years.
Belle, we already had a “mini-forest” on the property and there was no space for her coconuts. It was terrible. Weird that when my lola was well into her 80s and her eyesight was failing, she had a lot of trees cut down, including an old, huge ylang-ylang tree.
Hi,
I would like to say first of all that I love your website! I’ve been trying out your recipes for a while now and they all turned out great. My in-laws (they are Mexicans) are so impressed. They hadn’t tried any type of Asian cooking until I came to live here.
I miss buko juice a lot more now just by looking at those pictures!! Where I am now, they don’t sell these young coconuts. Yung pang niyog lang. And even that, I mean, they don’t know how to use the meat correctly (like scraping the meat out to make gata). Anyway, naglalaway na ko just thinking about coconuts.
Thank you, Ruby. Home cooking is such a great way to introduce non-Filipinos to Filipino food. Re “Where I am now, they donÕt sell these young coconuts”—oh, how unfortunate. buko juice and tender coconut meat must be two of the top perks of living in the tropics. mango is still on top of my list though hehehe