What to Do With These Palm Nuts? A Short Exploration + Cat pics! 😂

Okay... That backyard palm tree is dropping some palm nuts all over the place. I mean, what are these for???

Boy do I really have a lot of time these days. I love it. Haha. My inquisitive and scientific mind keeps getting more "food" to "eat" these days. 😂

Anyway take a look at these babies...

Looks real nice right? Bright red is ❤.

Seeing them all scattered, I got curious. I've never tasted one before. I've never even tasted betel nuts too so why not take the chance to taste this now, right? 😅

Look, even the cats are curious.

Haha, funny cats. Mommy cat likes to photo bomb today... Too bad I got no food.

😅😅😅

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What is this nut?

A quick search of "What to do with palm nuts?" online will give you only one important use for these seeds: palm oil.

Wow. 😂

Search results indicate Palm oil production is one cause of deforestation and animal displacements in some countries. And this tree is just wasting it's fruits away in the backyard? Hmmm... 🤔

Wonder who even owns this tree because it's in the public yard of sorts. 😅 Ah apartment living...

Anyway, another thing you will see online is that in Africa these are also cooked and prepared for/with food. Hey wow right?

Locally we just see these in the city and don't care because we're busy working and making a living. Why would we even bother with mundane unimportant things when we're busy, right?

_{I'm just chilling out today to rest my hand/arm muscles from all the temp tatts cutting I did. 😊 Maybe I'm already semi-retired at this early age! 😱 Self-imposed retirement anyone? 😂}

I even saw a Duhat (Java plum) tree along the street somewhere out there and no one seems to bother at all! All the duhat doesn't even get sweeped. Where are the MMDA or the owner of the tree? Hmmm... 🤔

If I had a ladder I'd go up and get me some duhat/lomboy. I mean, c'mon it'd be basically free fruits if they let me get some.

Oh wait, we're talking about palm nuts... Ehem ehem.

Going back... It's kinda dark today due to the storm/tropical depression so I can't seem to get a good photo of the tree without using the flash.

It's drizzling so I don't want to get wet as well...

So what I did was just check further on these nuts. I peeled the red skin off and saw a yellow orangeish thin layer of... pulp?

Online it is said it's good as parrot food and that the taste is sweet. I tasted it a bit and spit it out again because there's no sweetness at all.

It's not bitter but I think it's kinda... mildly salty? I didn't dare taste a lot because I found it on the ground you know.

_{What sweetness? Lies! Lies!!!}

So I just removed the red skin and pulp, washed the two "naked" nuts and voila! Check it out: fresh and semi-dried up palm nuts.

Now what? Should I boil these and experiment some more??? Hmmm... 🤔🤔🤔

What would you do if you were me?

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Further exploration

Well for lack of better things to do... I went further than just peel it.

Online I saw a picture of a sliced palm nut, so hey I wondered if it looks just like this pic.

Looks interesting right? Do you think my palm nuts will look like that too? Let's check!

First I used the semi-dried nut. With all the fibers on it you'd think it's covered in broom fibers. I had to remove all of that because it's hard to slice or cut it with all those hair, err husk.

Gripping and slicing it makes your hand slightly greasy too so if you're going to cut the palm nut, be extra careful or else your hand will be the color of the nut's outer cover.

Anyway so I tried to slice it open but it's not cooperating that much so once the knife was kind of in it, I tapped it several times over the old and unused food cutting board. Voila!

Guess who's disappointed? Haha. It's not the same like in the picture at all!!! So what kind of palm nut is this then??? Hmmm...

The nearest thing I could find online is the betel nut sliced open. If it is indeed the Areca catechu, well hey, Wikipedia and it's source article says it's most likely a Philippine native! Oh hey!

Must be a betel nut variety then, being just an ornamental city plant... Betel nuts don't seem to have any health benefits upon quickly checking online. Frequent chewing leads to cancer and such. Mkay.

Moving on, I opened the other one without removing the husk because it's still fresh and cooperative. 😋

TADA!

Hmmm... Now it looks kinda tempting. I put my tongue on the surface and now it had some sweetness to it.

The white stuff isn't soft at all. Let's do a taste test shall we?

Okay, I tasted this a few times and it's like hard coconut, like dried up or dense coco meat. I bet it's rich in fiber too. Some are in my stomach already and so far I think it's ok.

No, it's not sweet at all but it's coconutty, like what's inside pan de coco only harder and crunchier.

It's pretty easy to carve out but that's all the time we have for now. Haha. It was fun finding out what's in it. Did you have fun reading?

Wait maybe I should chew on half of the nut. Hmmm...


_{5 minutes later...}

Well it's kinda mapakla(acrid) and did make me salivate a lot. Interesting. I guess I can try and make a bit of palm oil later? 😂 What do you think? But if it's betel nut then what's the use? Haha. Oh well.

Ants seem to like it a lot though. When I found these on the ground some ants came out of the red nut covering so I shook 'em and washed them off. And then again when I went back to the carved up half of the nut I found ants all over it! What the heck? The other halves don't have any ant visitors though... Maybe i'll just leave these back to the ants.

XOXO,
@artgirl

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