tree can have up to

four bottles containing up to a gallon of

jekaro hanging and

waiting to be collected each morning.
The tree will produce a similar quantity
that must be collected in the evening.
It is verv sweet and is usually mixed with
water for drinking and very nutritious, especially after four to six hours at
which point the yeast content is greatest.
After this it begins to become noticeably alcoholic and at 26 hours when the fermentation process stops, it can be drunk
as a wine.
In its sweet, unfermented stage it has been used as a substitute for
sother's milk.
When available, it can be used as a sweetener in any or all of the
traditional dishes.
‘when it is boiled down, it vields on an eight to one ratio a
delicious syrup termed iekami which is used as a sweetener in drinking and also
eaten with coconut at its various stages.
It can be mixed and further cooked with
coconut gratings to produce a type of coconut candy, much prized, called amitama.
At around the 15th to L&8th month, the coconut begins to sprout.
At this time,
the inside of the nut turns gradually to a sweet apple-like, spongy substance called
wou.
A side product in copra making, it is eaten in the interior islands by those
zathering the nuts.
Then again eaten by those while husking.
When the nuts are

cracked, children flock to the area to scoop out the soft iou before the nuts are
layed out under the sun.
lou is sometimes crushed and mixed raw with jekaro and
thickened with flour into a pudding--aikiou.
Also it can be steamed or baked in

a basket (iutur) or even while still in the nut (umum ilo lot).

To the aikiou dish el is often added.
Indeed it is through the el or famous
‘coconut milk" that the coconut can be seen as the central ingredient in all tradi-

tional cooking.
El is obtained by mixing the grated coconut or waini with a little
water and squeezing.
“uch of the oil and a great deal of flavor is thereby re-

~eased into solution--pure white in color.

dish conceivable.

When available,

it

El can, and often is, mixed into every

is normally mixed

into the rice on a daily

=

&.

38

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es

aia

ee a ee ee

Sasis at the rate of about one coconut per two cups of rice.

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