Alright well, the other night my husband said the words I’ve been dreading for a while.

“Hey Mare. We gotta talk. This drive-thru thing we’ve been doing just can’t keep going. We both know it’s been good and fun but the time has {probably} come….to eat some vegetables and make some healthy, nutritious home-cooked meals.”

I knew it was coming soon. I could feel it in my bones. No, literally. I probably could feel it in my bones because no amounts of enchiladas and bottomless salsa verde could give me the calcium my body is probably longing for ha!

Before you get too worried about me, know that I’m (mostly) being facetious. Admittedly, we did eat out probably 3-4 times a week, which is a lot, but I’ve reeled things back in. Of course, I will never say we will NEVER eat out because it’s always taco Tuesday somewhere, am I right?!

Anyway, like I’ve said a few times before, I’m not the best at making chicken meals from scratch and I am quite “chickened” out, so I wanted to go with shrimp for my low fat protein of choice this time around. The other key thing I look for in healthy recipes is SPICES and/or fresh HERBS. Those are my key factors for clean eating that tastes like a cheat meal.

My husband found the most amazing paleo Jamaican Black Pepper shrimp recipe (which I’m actually going to be kind of mean and share that recipe next week!) and it was DELICIOUS! You use coconut flour to bread the shrimp instead of regular flour, and when you combine the coconut with the pepper and Jamaican herbs, it is heavenly.

I promise I will share that recipe next week, but today I wanted to talk about the part of the recipe that was the most intriguing to me. I actually made my OWN coconut flour and coconut from a bag of unsweetened coconut flakes and it was awesome! And so easy! And so cheap too!

One regular bag of unsweetened coconut flakes will cost you about $3 and from that you can get about five cups of coconut milk and about two cups of coconut flour! I think if you bought five cups of coconut milk and two cups of coconut flour it would be roughly between $10-15 dollars, since you usually have to buy coconut flour from an expensive health foods store. And this is so fresh and yummy! You’ll be so happy you tried it. Trust me, if I can do it, YOU definitely can do it!

Go out and grab a bag of unsweetened coconut flakes and make some coconut flour and milk and come back next week for my amazing shrimp recipe!

Have you ever made your own coconut milk or coconut flour? What did you think? Please share in the comments below.

How to Make Coconut Milk with Dried Coconut Flakes

Prep Time

10 mins

Total Time

10 mins

The process to make coconut milk from dried, shredded coconut is actually pretty close to making it with fresh coconuts without the hassle of cracking open a coconut.

Ingredients

2 cups of organic coconut flakes unsweetened

4 cups of filtered water boiled

Instructions

1- In a high-powered blender, combine the shredded coconut and boiled water.

2- Blend for about 5 minutes.

3- Pour mixture through a sieve or nut milk bag to separate liquid from coconut pieces.

4- Store coconut milk in the refrigerator to use as needed.

5- Keep the coconut pulp and follow this recipe to make homemade coconut flour.

How to Make Coconut Flour

Prep Time

5 mins

Cook Time

45 mins

Total Time

50 mins

Ingredients:

Coconut pulp strained using a nut bag from homemade coconut milk recipe

Baking sheet

Parchment paper

Instructions:

1- Heat oven to 120 degrees.

2- Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

3- Spread out coconut pulp on parchment paper and bake for 45 minutes or until the coconut pulp is dried (no moisture at all).

4- Remove from oven and let cool for a few minutes

5- Blend coconut pulp in a Vitamix or food processor for 1-2 minutes until pulp becomes a fine powder.

6- Store coconut flour in an air-tight container.

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