Cooking Lovo

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Our second day at Bamboo was great! The guys that work here are so nice and taught us a lot about Fijian culture.

The day’s activity was to help make Lovo, traditional Fijian food that’s cooked over a fire pit. We first went with Rico to collect firewood a couple blocks down. Then he showed us how to open and crack a coconut. There’s a weak spot that you have to hit pretty hard but once you get the first crack the rest is easy.

Coconut water tastes so good!!! I was expecting it to taste a little funky because it didn’t have sweetener or anything but it didn’t even need it! Addicting stuff and surprisingly good for you. Next they showed us how to shave the coconut meat. You sit on a board that has a round blade on the end and scrape out the insides. After they scooped out all of the coconuts they put the shavings in a sack to squeeze out the milk. I couldn’t resist rubbing it on my skin as some natural lotion.

Rico also showed us how to clean and shave taro, the Fijian version of potatoes. You have to peel it like a carrot with a big knife and then cut off the stem. They cooked the leaves too and served it like spinach.

We walked around to see the others hostels on this street but came back to Bamboo for dinner and Kava. The Lovo was delicious and it was cool that we helped make it!

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Photos

Cracking coconuts
I'm a pro now

Coconut water
Melissa drinking coconut water after she opened it

Shaving coconuts
One of the Bamboo guys showed us how to shave a coconut

Coconut milk
They had to wring out the milk from coconut shavings

Taro
Rico showed us how to shave the taro root

Lovo!!!
Yum! We helped make it!