How to Grill a Pie

When I took the pictures for this post, I didn't know if the title would be How to Grill a Pie or How Not to Grill a Pie.  As you can tell, there's a happy ending to today's blog post!

There has been a giant bag of rhubarb burning a hole in my freezer for about a month now.  I've been dying for an excuse to make a rhubarb pie, the most delicious dessert on the planet.  With temperatures over 105 for the last several weeks and the air conditioner laboring to keep the house under 80, I haven't turned on the oven, dishwasher or dryer since the heat wave started.  And yet, there was the rhubarb.  And it was our turn to host dinner club.  And nothing is better than rhubarb pie.  Maybe the flavor of rhubarb would compensate for our guests having to blot sweat from their faces all during dinner.

Heat-dispersing platform for baking a pie in the grill.

I called Mom to remind me about the perfect ratio of sugar to rhubarb, and she suggested opening a window to vent the kitchen if I must make the pie.  Then I got to thinking about our grill.  It's really just an outdoor gas oven, right?  If I could figure out how to cook the pie out there, the house would still be cool for dinner.  So this time I called Dad, and he thought it would work, but I should put a heat-deflector under the pie dish with some air between the heat-deflector and the pie to allow air and heat to circulate.  The above picture shows my system for evening out the heat from the burners, with the metal grill for elevating the pie off the cast iron pan.  I think any baking sheet would work in place of the cast iron pan for a heat-deflector. 

Pie with edge protector for protecting the crust edge from burning.

To the left of the pan, you see a crucial element for the success of grilling a pie: an oven thermometer.   I preheated the grill to 400 degrees, the temperature required by my pie recipe.  My grill doesn't have any sort of temperature gauge besides purely decorative 'low' and 'high' markings, but after some playing, I discovered that keeping both burners on low would keep the temperature somewhere between 375 and 450 - close enough! 

Success!  One rhubarb pie baked in the grill.

The pie was supposed to bake for 50 minutes.  I checked it every 15 minutes or so, and ended up letting it cook for about an hour and 15 minutes.  It cooked perfectly - no burnt crust and no grill taste - just delicious, tart, heavenly rhubarb.

Some tips:

• Clean the grill really well before you start, especially if your grill is full of meat fat that might burn and smoke your pie with carcinogenic meat fat smoke.
• Use metal pans so they don't crack from uneven heat.
• Elevate your pie dish off of the pan underneath it - this is a must.  I also cooked cornbread in the grill, and I made the first batch straight on the pan and burned the bottom.
• Put foil under the pie to catch any juice dripping out of it - you don't want smoke from burning sugar to flavor your pie.
• Check frequently until you trust your temperature, but just barely crack open the grill to keep the heat inside.
• Maybe try some cornbread or something easy first to learn the process before you use expensive and time-consuming ingredients.

What's with all the grass spiders?

Note: If you've tried to sign up to receive my posts by email, I think I've fixed the problem.

It's the strangest summer.  Everything has looked like August since the middle of June.  The leaves are starting to yellow and fall, the current weeds are ones you see in August and September, and the yellow jackets are out, even though I usually only see those in September.
 
One thing that really stands out is all the grass spiders' funnel-shaped webs that seem to have popped up everywhere.  They seem to blanket the hillsides at Radnor Lake, but they are also all over the place in the less-traveled parts of our yard.  They look like sheets of spider web with a funnel in one corner.

Grass spider web.

Since I only remember seeing them in late August and September, I assumed that was their active season.  It turns out that they are active all summer, but the dry dust gets caught in their webs, making them visible.  We are seeing them now because we've only had a quarter inch of rain since the end of May, and everything is really dusty.  Grass spiders are not taking over the world - they've been here all along.

White patches are grass spider webs.

Grass spiders are neat spiders.  They build their sheet web with a little hidey-spout to sit in.  They often dangle some web threads over the sheet too.  Any insect that stumbles onto the sheet or flies into the threads and drops is doomed.  The web isn't sticky, so the insects aren't trapped; rather the web spider is shockingly fast and races out from the funnel as soon as it feels a victim on the sheet.  You can observe this phenomenon yourself if you catch an insect and drop it on a grass spider web. Grass spiders kill their prey with venom, like most spiders do.  They don't bite people, and the venom is harmless to us if they are forced to bite you (if you pick one). 

Grass spider web with funnel in the middle.

Grass spiders are beneficial organisms.  They eat pest insects and help me with pest control in the vegetable garden.  I'm glad to have them in the yard.  They tend to stay put on their webs, so I don't find them in our house very often.  Male grass spiders do go a-wanderin' when it's time to find a mate.  They must have a defined mating season, because it seems one night every spring I walk into my kitchen (near the back door that isn't sealed very tightly), turn on the light, and there are two or three male grass spiders searching for love on the kitchen floor.  Here's a link to see what grass spiders look like (they are only about an inch across, but the picture makes them look gigantic). 

Growing Black Chickpeas

I met a fascinating plant on the farm this week - the black chickpea.  I'm accustomed to seeing tan chickpeas in the grocery store, but it turns out that chickpea skins come in the same variety of colors as human skins - light tan through yellow to red, dark brown and black.  Maybe it's because I am reading the Hunger Games trilogy (probably shouldn't have admitted that), but these plants sound like something that would be found in the arena - useful and dangerous at the same time.  You'll have to see if you agree with me - check it out:

Chickpea (Cicer arietinum) flower.

Chickpeas (Cicer arietinum) have miniature pea flowers, with the typical pea's asymmetrical petals.  The flowers each contain a tiny, elongate ovary that will elongate into a pod with seeds once the flower is pollinated.  Each pod contains one to three seeds, many fewer than English peas.  Chickpeas, regular peas and beans are all in the same plant family - the fabulous Fabaceae, or legume family.

Green chickpea pods.

The leaves and youngest green pods of chickpeas can be eaten raw.  The enlarged but green pods can be cooked like regular peas.  The mature pods turn brown and contain dry seeds. These seeds are usually eaten cooked.  The black chick peas do not turn black until they are mature and dry, and they retain their black color even after they are cooked.  Regardless of skin color, all chick peas are the same on the inside - tan. 

Chickpea pods and leaves with acid secretion making the plant glisten.

The really strange thing about chickpeas is that their leaves and pods secrete a liquid that contains a dangerous soup of acids (Katniss would know that!).  When you brush against these plants, they feel moist.  If you have any scratches on your skin, you will notice that the secretion burns painfully.  If you go blackberry picking one day then chickpea harvesting the next, you will be uncomfortable!  I imagine if you picked them all day, you might have some skin erosion.  On large farms, chick peas are harvested by machine, so don't worry too much about fingerless chickpea harvesters.  The acid is very useful to the plant.  If you were a disease organism or an insect looking to eat a garbanzo bean plant, you would definitely change your mind when you were burned by the malic, oxalic and hydrochloric acids on the plant.

Besides deterring pests, the garbanzo bean secretion does another important job.  It works just like sweat and keeps the plant cool!  The plants secrete their sweat later in their lifespan when their seeds are mature, and presumably when the growing season is edging toward summer heat.  The sweat keeps their leaves and pods cooler than non-sweating leaves when the temperature is high.  As what happens when we sweat, the plants lose water.  They are at risk of dehydrating if there is not enough soil moisture for them to absorb.  Also, moist things tend to rot or become infected as a general rule, so the acid is necessary to protect the moist plants from rotting.

Nearly dry chickpea pod.

The acid secretion on chickpea plants is both useful and harmful to people.  It tastes good, since acids taste sour.  In fact, one of chickpea's acids is malic acid, which provides the tartness in apples.  The acid secretion can be collected by draping a thin cloth over the leaves, letting it sit all night until dew forms, then wringing out the cloth.  It can be used to make a unique lemonade-type drink.  The harmful part comes from oxalic acid.  Oxalic acid interferes with the absorption of calcium and some other minerals from food, and it can aggravate kidney stones.  Oxalic acid is also found in spinach, and that's why spinach and chickpea leaves should not be eaten every single day, though moderate consumption is harmless.. 

Black Kabuli chickpea.

Above is a black garbanzo bean (chickpea) freshly picked.

So what's the verdict?  Would chickpeas make a great Hunger Games plant?  Edible but covered in burning acid - perfect!

Three Sisters Molé Enchiladas with Blackberry Salsa

This is a special cooking edition of my blog.  Don't panic - cooking is nothing more than applied Biology (and Chemistry and Physics and Math and Art...), so there are some way interesting biological phenomena to write about here.  One of my cooking heroes, Isa Chandra Moskowitz, has issued a cooking challenge, and I took the bait.  Isa Chandra is the author of several vegan cookbooks, including Appetite for Reduction, the most useful and well-thought-out cookbook I've ever used.  The challenge is to cook a vegan entrée in under 40 minutes using black-eyed peas, bittersweet chocolate, mint and blackberries.  The recipe must be published on the internet, and there are prizes and fame/fortune involved.  I'll report back about the results of the contest!

Here is a picture of my invention, Three Sisters Molé Enchiladas with Blackberry Salsa: 

Three Sisters Molé Enchiladas with Blackberry Salsa

The contest ingredients got me thinking about agricultural centers of origin.  Agriculture started in many concentrated locations (centers of origin) throughout the world, and cuisines arose based on what crops were domesticated from the species growing in the area, with foreign ingredients added in to the extent that cultures traveled and mixed.  See if you can match the crops with the center of origin here based on what you know about modern international cuisines.  Answers are below the table.

Center of Origin	Crop
1. China	a. wheat, oats, fig, pomegranate
2. India	b. maize, beans, tomato, potato, pumpkins
3. Ethiopia	c. wheat, barley, sorghum, okra, coffee
4. South America	d. wheat, rape (canola), peas, lettuce, asparagus
5. Mediterranean	e. rice, chickpea, eggplant, tangerine
6. Middle East	f. millet, soybean, cabbage, radish, apple

Answers: 1f, 2e, 3c, 4b, 5d, 6a

Since two of the challenge ingredients (chocolate and blackberries) originate from the New World, and beans are mostly a New World crop (though black eyed peas originated in Africa), I decided to mine this vein and emphasize New World crops.  I ended up with enchiladas based on the agricultural icons, the three sisters: beans, corn and squash.  I also used tomatoes, peppers, onions, blackberries, chocolate and sunflower seeds in the recipe.  If only I could have figured out how to add cranberries, potatoes and sweet potatoes, I would have hit all the biggest crops to have originated from the New World.  Ingredients from elsewhere in the world include cumin, cilantro, oregano, wheat, cucumbers and lemon.  Isn't it strange that cumin, cilantro and cucumbers, ingredients that are indispensable to Tex-Mex cuisine, were imported to the Americas?  And that tomatoes were not an original part of Italian cuisine but were brought to Europe from Central America? 

So who are these sisters, and what are they doing in a vegan recipe?  The three sisters are staple crops grown together as companion plants by several groups of Native Americans.  The seeds of beans, corn and squash are planted in a group on a mound.  The corn grows tall and straight, providing both food for people and a pole for the beans to climb.  The squash stays low to the ground and keeps the soil cooler and moist by shading it around the base of all three plants.  It also has prickly leaves, deterring some potential pests.  The beans stalks climb the corn, lifting their fruits off the ground and taking advantage of light above the squash leaves.  At the same time, the bean roots enrich the soil with nitrogen for all three plants.  The three sisters produce more food when grown together than any of the plants grown separately.  In addition, the beans and corn provide complete protein from vegetarian sources for their human cultivators.

The recipe is below, if you'd like to make this meal-with-a-story.  It turned out to be delicious, and it's a low-calorie and low-fat meal as well.  The first time you make these, you'll need to be a Zen kitchen master to get everything done in less than 40 minutes: banish the pets and kids, turn off the radio, stand up straight, elbows in, breathe into your abdomen.  You can do it.  It's quick and easy the second time through, since all the components are actually very simple once you know how they go.  I've found this to be the case with any new recipe I make - there's always a learning curve.  You can also prepare the salsa a day ahead and let it sit in the fridge to develop its flavors, but that would violate the 40 minutes thing.

Three Sisters Molé Enchiladas with Blackberry Salsa

Three Sisters Molé Enchiladas with Blackberry Salsa
* Ingredients with asterisks evolved and were domesticated in the New World
Serves 6, at approximately 450 calories per serving, depending on your corn tortillas

Molé Enchilada Sauce Ingredients
1 T sunflower oil*
1 T whole wheat flour
2 T chili powder*
1 t cumin
2 c vegetable broth
1 small can tomato paste*
2 t fresh oregano, minced (1 t dried)
2 oz vegan bittersweet chocolate*
1/2 t salt


Enchilada Ingredients
1 t sunflower oil*
1 large onion, chopped (reserve 2 T for salsa)*
1 medium zucchini, chopped*
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 jalepeno, diced*
1 t cumin
1 15 oz. can black eyed peas, drained and rinsed (*most beans originate from South America, but not black eyed peas)
1 15 oz can hominy, drained and rinsed* (you could substitute sweet corn if you prefer, but add it with the zucchini while cooking)
12 soft corn tortillas
2 T roasted, salted, shelled sunflower seeds*

Salsa Ingredients
2 T chopped onion (from above)*
Juice of one lemon
1 t olive oil (ok, you could use sunflower, but olive oil is yummy in salsa)
2 cucumbers, chopped (peel if you like)
1/4 c chopped fresh cilantro
1/4 c chopped fresh mint
1/2 t cumin
1/4 t cayenne*
1/2 t salt
1/2 cup blackberries*

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit.

2. Make the enchilada sauce:  In a medium saucepan heat the oil on medium, add the flour and stir until toasty (30 seconds), stir in chili powder and cumin for 30 seconds, stir in broth, add all other ingredients.  Bring to a boil, reduce temperature and simmer 5 minutes, stirring often.

3. Make the enchiladas:

• In a large sauté pan on medium heat, sauté the onions in the oil until they start to soften, add the zucchini, garlic, jalepeno and cumin and continue to sauté until the zucchini starts to soften.  Stir in the black eyed peas and hominy and allow to heat up. 
• Dunk the tortillas in the enchilada sauce and wrap a large spoonful of filling in each tortilla.  Careful - everything should be hot at this point - don't burn yourself.  Line up the tortillas in a large glass baking dish.  Pour the enchilada sauce over the enchiladas and sprinkle sunflower seeds on the top.  
• Bake for 10-15 minutes uncovered, until the edges of the tortillas start to brown and the sauce is bubbling.

4. Make the salsa while the enchiladas bake: Combine all ingredients except blackberries in a dish and stir well.  Gently stir in the blackberries.

5. Serve enchiladas topped with a spoonful of salsa.



I owe a big thanks to my friend, Jenny, a vegan food aficionado, for the idea to make enchiladas.  Thanks also to my friends for being guinea pigs: Bruce, Coke and Linda, your bravery and enthusiasm are inspiring!

Rethinking the Canada Goose

Don't say Canadian - it's Canada.  The Canada goose (Branta canadensis) is a common sight in Lincoln Park, and I got to know their behaviors a little better as I watched them raise their young this spring.  Despite what some people say, they're really quite enjoyable neighbors.

Canada geese pair and young in Lincoln Park.

The geese started hatching in early May this year, and within a day or two, they were out of the nest walking and swimming and finding food.  Adult geese mate for life, with the average goose living around 24 years of age in the wild.  They tend and defend their young, but they do not feed them.  The goslings feed themselves as soon as they are out of the nest. 

Dabbling geese with a duck observing them, probably finding their upended tails completely hilarious.

Geese eat muck from the bottom of ponds, as you can see them doing in the photo above.  The tails-up bobbing for scum is called dabbling, and it never fails to crack me up.  Geese also eat grass, grains, berries and other plants, with the occasional bug thrown in.  Herbivores in general must eat a lot more volume of food to survive, and geese seem to eat constantly.  Such a large volume of food results in respectable quantities of goose poop, which people sometimes find annoying.  Admittedly, there are some beach areas in the US with hundreds of Canada geese where I would not want to walk barefoot or swim, but these are not the norm.  A little bit of goose poop is certainly better than a little bit of dog poop, since carnivore poop usually contains more harmful disease bacteria than herbivore poop.

Many of the geese in Lincoln Park probably flew north to Chicago earlier in the spring from the southern US or Mexico.  More Canada geese are migratory than non-migratory, though some members of the species have begun to live in the same location year-round.  The newer, non-migratory geese are an evolutionary response to the recent changes in their habitat: in the past 100 years, permanent open grassy areas with maintained, predator-free ponds have appeared everywhere.  Indeed, golf courses, airports, office complexes and neighborhoods provide goose heaven, and Canada geese have increased their numbers in response.  Once a fairly rare species, the Canada goose has become common enough to annoy annoyable people, sometimes even being called a pest.

In Lincoln Park, people mostly seem to enjoy the geese.  They watch them, photograph them and feed them, despite signs forbidding the feeding of wildlife.  The goslings provide food for the black-crowned night herons, and the geese eat excess pond vegetation.  Canada goose behaviors are fairly simple and easy to observe, so lots of kids and adults learn about bird biology by observing geese.  Unfortunately, geese seem to be such a common sight that some people have lost their respect for the geese's size and strength.  Parents let their toddlers chase the geese and approach the young, even with the parent geese hissing and ready to bite (yes, they lunge, flap, bite and cause an unnerving ruckus in self-defense).

A wood duck (left) hanging out with Canada gees (right) at the Alfred Caldwell Lily Pond in Lincoln Park.

Where Canada geese are a considered a nuisance, wildlife management personnel have responded with extended hunting seasons, attack dogs, culling of adult birds and donation to food charities, collection of eggs for human consumption (I hear they are delicious) and addling of goose eggs.  Addling is a technical term that means preventing an egg from developing without destroying the egg, by shaking or coating with oil to prevent oxygen from diffusing into the egg.  Goose eggs are addled instead of being simply taken because the geese can lay a second clutch of eggs.  Canada geese, like most animals, are regulated.  Geese are regulated by the Migratory Bird Act, so before someone dabbles in addling, they must apply for a permit.  An easier humane solution to overpopulation of geese would be to modify habitat to make it less inviting.  Geese will not nest in an area without good sight-lines for detecting predators, so smaller patches of lawn interspersed with shrubs or potential predator hiding places will deter them.  If we take a little time to appreciate and get to know Canada geese, they seem much less like nuisances and much more like fascinating clowns of the bird variety.

American Chestnut Trees

Here's something you don't see every day...

American chestnut (Castanea dentata) leaves.

 ....an American Chestnut tree!  My parents are growing American Chestnuts (Castanea dentata) on their property to help bring this great American tree species back to prominence.  Mom learned about the American Chestnut and wanted to get involved, and Dad was game to help Mom put in the work needed to plant and protect these trees as they try to survive.  They are both pleased with their American Chestnuts.

Dad with an American Chestnut on Father's Day.

Eastern forests in the United States were once dominated by this tree species.   If you think about how prevalent oak trees are in the Eastern forests of this country, it gives you a sense of the size of the American Chestnut's niche.  Its nuts provided great quantities of seriously delicious food for people, deer, bears, squirrels and many other animals.  It is a fast-growing member of the oak plant family (Fagaceae), and its wood is strong and particularly resistant to decay, so it was an extremely useful lumber-producing tree.

Why am I speaking in the past tense?  Because this tree species is now mostly gone due to the chestnut blight.  Chestnut blight (Cryphonectria parasitica) is a fungal disease that evolved in Asia and was accidentally brought to the U. S. in the late 1800's, probably on furniture, lumber or nuts.  Chinese Chestnut trees evolved with the disease, so they are resistant to it, but our trees were not resistant, and they succumbed to the disease as quickly as Native Americans died from European diseases introduced by the first European settlers of this land.  The disease was discovered in 1904, and by 1950, almost all the American chestnut trees were dead, with only small shrubby root sprouts left surviving.

Chestnut catkins (flowers).  The narrow ones have only male flowers, the upper one has some pollinated female flowers, which will produce nuts.

Several organizations, including the American Chestnut Foundation, are trying to breed blight-resistant chestnuts and repopulate our forests with this missing foundation species.  Chestnut-lovers are using existing trees to search for blight resistance.  They are also breeding Chinese Chestnut trees with American chestnut trees, eliminating those that don't survive the blight, and crossing the offspring back with American Chestnuts to result in trees that are mostly American but with the Chinese blight-resistance genes.  Right now, there exist trees that are 98% American with 2% Chinese genes.  These mostly American Chestnuts are responding well to blight exposure.  Nothing against Chinese Chestnut trees - they are great, but they're adapted to Chinese ecosystems.  Chestnut-lovers and ecologists want to maintain both species - with the American Chestnut trees back in the ecosystems here.  In the mean time, many people have planted Chinese or European Chestnuts in their yards in order to have some chestnuts to eat in the fall. 

Chestnut catkins with pollinated female flowers that have become burs, and male flowers above them.

Chestnuts have either all male flowers or male and female flowers.  Mom and Dad obtained dozens of chestnuts from the American Chestnut Foundation so they would have many trees and guarantee that they could have cross-pollination between the trees.  Chestnuts cannot self-pollinate.  This time of year,  pollinated female flowers are enlarging into burs.  Burs are spiky fruits that contain chestnut seeds.  In the fall, the seeds will be mature, the fruits will crack open, and the whole bur will fall to the ground.  As soon as the burs crack open, the seeds are mature and ready to overwinter and grow into new trees or to be eaten.

There are a few remaining adult American Chestnuts in North America.  Many of the surviving ones are outside the former range for American Chestnut trees, so the blight hasn't spread easily to them.  Also, there are different climactic conditions outside our chestnut's normal range, which cause the blight fungus to be weaker, or hypovirulent.  Mom and Dad's chestnut trees are outside the normal range, so they may survive longer than other American Chestnuts.  Of the original seeds they planted, about half remain.  Their trees probably didn't die due to blight, but to non-ideal climactic conditions.  Blight tends to affect teenage trees, and these trees are younger.  It is likely that all my parents' trees will eventually die, unfortunately.  Still, they may have a resistant tree, and their trees help maintain living tissue, help educate people about the trees, and help scientists learn more about what these trees need to survive.  With so many people working to solve this ecological tragedy, it appears likely that American Chestnuts will eventually recover.  I'm so proud of my parents for helping the American Chestnut!

What ARE Coconuts Anyway???

On my marathon visit to the Chicago Field Museum, I geeked out most over the plant models.  There are cases and cases of gorgeous models of representative members of lots of plant families.  I, of course, amused myself by trying to guess what family was represented in each case without looking at labels.  It turns out I have forgotten quite a bit of Botany since my days at MTSU.  Time for a little refresher course.

The plant models didn't photograph well, due to the dim light, glaring glass, and lack of likely appeal of subject matter to the rest of the world.  However, I couldn't resist taking this picture of a coconut model:

Coconut model at the Field Museum.

Coconuts are completely strange to most people who live in temperate climates.  We don't tend to eat lots of them, and we rarely even see them.  If we see them, they are big brown woody balls in the produce section, or they are tiny flakes of sugary white in the baking aisle.  When we go to the beach and a real coconut washes up on shore, we don't believe people when they tell us what they are.  Well, here's your chance to stop feeling so uninformed when it comes to coconuts.

Coconuts are the fruits and seeds of the coconut palm.  A complete coconut is green or brown, oblong and bigger than a football.  The brown woody thing in the produce section is the innermost part of the fruit plus the seed of the coconut.  The whole fruit is made of layers of fibrous husk called coir.  The fruit is less dense than water, so it floats.  You may have noticed that the scratchy brown doormat outside your front door is made of coir.  Coconut palms often drop their fruit where waves can wash them into the ocean, and the fruits can then be dispersed out around the world to grow somewhere else.  The outermost two layers of the fruit are removed before whole coconuts are brought to our stores.

Field museum coconut model with labels.

Each coconut fruit contains one giant seed, which is almost entirely white with a paper thin layer of seed coat around it.  The seed contains an embryo, which can grow into a new palm, and endosperm, which is a food source for the growing embryo.  When the seed is first formed, the embryo is microscopic, and the endosperm fills up most of the space inside the seed.  The early embryo is slightly sweet and crunchy.  As the coconut starts to get larger, the endosperm becomes somewhat more gelatinous and is known as green coconut meat.  When the seeds are nearly mature, the endosperm forms solid endosperm around the outer edge of the seed and liquid endosperm inside the seed - coconut meat and coconut water.  A mature coconut seed will also contain some air, which helps it float in the ocean.  All stages of coconuts can be eaten, and they all taste coconutty, slightly sweat and delicious.  Coconuts contain a high proportion of saturated fat, unusual for a plant but much more common in butter and animal fats.

If a coconut escapes consumption by a human and floats off to a new land, it will begin to germinate.  The embryo enlarges into a root and a shoot, and it escapes the hard coconut shell through structures called eyes that look like dimples on the surface of the coconut.  As the embryo starts to grow, it forms a mass inside the coconut called a coconut apple.  The mass is soaks up the nutrients from the endosperm and transfers those nutrients to the growing shoot and root of the embryo.  The coconut apple is also edible - in fact it's considered quite delicious, though I have unfortunately not tasted it.

Writing about coconuts is definitely making me want to conduct some field research about the gastronomic virtues of the various stages of coconuts!  Anyone up for a Caribbean vacation?