Thing a Day: 001/365 (Patreon)

New Years Resolutions. I've never taken them too seriously. Except for one.

Several years ago, there was something silly and odd that I didn't like about myself.

See, I was a foodie before it was cool. I will eat anything (don't get any ideas, bwahaha). But there was one food I just could NOT get my head around: coconut.

Especially the candied kind, like you find on a Mounds Bar. It wasn't the flavor: it was the texture. Bleeeghh. When I was a little kid, my grandfather said he would give me $50 if I could eat a Mounds bar. This was $50, to a kid under the age of 10, in the '90s. I just couldn't do it.

Thing is, the textural hatred bled into a hatred for the flavor. Coconut shrimp, coconut milk (Thai food was otherwise amazing!), coconut water, all of it.

And it bugged me, so bad. I had eaten every organ meat under the sun, had actually enjoyed that semi-fertilized Philipino egg snack (whose name escapes me at the moment... balut?), boiled lamb brain was just not my flavor, but my Moroccan buddies said that that was excusable, because yeecch. But 99.9% of food? I was down.

Except for coconut. For something so universal, I just couldn't get over it. So, many New Years Days ago, I decided to conquer it. I went to a Whole Foods, and I bought 3 coconuts.

I bashed those fuckers open with a hammer. I tore out the meat. I started out with the path of least resistance. Just nibbling on some from time to time. The fresh stuff wasn't so bad, so I started there.

Then, cooking with it. Putting it into a blender with some other fruit and making smoothies. Just throwing myself into this stupid freaking tree-fruit thing.

And I worked my way up. Day after day. I must have spent hundreds of dollars of fucking coconuts that year. For real! It was almost an obsession. But by the next New Year? Summabitch.

Today, I freaking love this stuff. I can now devour a macaroon with the best of them. I keep coconut milk on hand because that stuff is the shit in a soup on a cold day. And every time I have coconut now, a part of me feels proud in a dumb way, because I conquered something that was big, even if it was, albeit, stupid and unimportant. I made the humble coconut my bitch.

And, since making the humble coconut my bitch, and with all the pride I've felt... I realize I have gone many years without carrying through on any sort of resolution.

So this year, let's try something: sometimes it'll be a big full-length thing, with kinky pics, long-winded essays, pieces of fiction, you name it; other times, it'll just be a dumb meme accompanied by "hehehehe." But every day, I just want to post something here. Every day. No. 001 of 365. (Or 366! Leap year!)

Lime in the coconut, muthafuckas. Let's do this.