coconut oil.. Have you tried it?

About the green tea...what makes a bigger impact to quality of taste is the temperature of the water. I learned this on a trip to china once. I can't remember the exact temperature they recommended, but I do remember the huge impact it had on taste. I'm sure you can google to find out optimum temperature for green tea (and black tea). I really miss the wonderful teas I drank in china though.

I always just bring the water to a rolling boil, stir in some honey, then add the tea bag. Then I just wait until it's cool enough to drink. To me, it's always yummy that way. My husband will often brew it or make sun tea just like you would for black tea, except he often adds in some peaches or blueberries for extra flavor. Then he uses stevia in his. We keep some of his in the fridge.






ETA: And what's the deal with people putting oil/butter in coffee? That's just weird. :noway: :laugh:

it's really nice for baking to replace butter, and it doesn't leave a coconut taste if you use it in regular cooking, but the thing is you should only use it to replace butter, because coconut oil, like butter, is a saturated fat (it's solid at room temperature), and so if you are usually using a lot of olive oil and canola oil and these oils that are healthy unsatured fats and suddenly replace it all with coconut oil you will be adding a lot of saturated fat to your diet which isn't good. I would definitely use it to replace butter especially with sweet things because it tastes good and has more nutrients it seems.

Another complaint is that it comes in a jar, not in a stick like butter, so getting it out (especially measuring it for recipes like 1/4 cup or something) is very difficult. Also in baking it is a 1:1 ratio, if it calls for 1/4 cup butter, it's 1/4 cup coconut oil.

If you believe what your saying then coconut oil has almost double the saturated fat content, just thought I'd let you know.

There is nothing magical about coconut oil and many of the touted "health benefits" are anecdotal at best. I use it on occasion because it tastes good...I love popping my pop corn in it and coconut rice pilaf is awesome. Coconut oil is still fat...and is a lot of saturated fat...granted some of it is medium chain saturated fat, but that's only about half...the other half is regular old long chain saturated fat.

If you use it I would recommend actually cooking with it in a responsible manner...dumping Tbsps of the stuff into your tea and coffee and what not is just stupefying to me unless you just really need the fat and the calories that come along with it. There are numerous and better ways to get healthy fats into your body without dumping Tbsps of oil into your tea.

I use it on my skin every night. Love it.

I swear by coconut oil! I have used it for cooking for years (frying, subsitute for oils in cakes, etc.) You have to watch which foods you use it with because it leaves kind of a sweet taste when cooking with it. Recently I started making sugar scrubs with coconut oil and oh my! It's amazing stuff!! I use it for my hair, as a moisterizer on really dry skin. Search the internet and there's thousands of uses for coconut oil! I just love it! (obviously)

It is what I use on my dry skin. My feet are finally going back to summer feet. I am not a fan of coconut so I will not be eating it. However if it can make my skin baby soft. I am all over that.

My current favorite tea is a coconut/chocolate. Then I put coconut milk or vanilla soy creamer into it. Mmm. As for coconut oil, it is delicious with certain foods. I love coconut chicken. Heck, I love coconut. But there are a lot of oils out there that are great for you, so mix it up, and get the benefits of all of them! Remember to moderate. Coconut, nut, grapeseed and olive oils really rock, but they'll still kill your calorie intake if you aren't careful. Oh, that reminds me, my fave salad dressing is roasted hazelnut oil and vinegar. I can eat that all day. Does anyone have an interesting coconut oil salad dressing recipe?

I use it instead of butter / normal oil in muffins often. And I cooked chicken with a lil bit of it just before! Definitely a better way to get a bit of coconut flavour than a can of coconut milk.
I also scrub myself with coconut oil + sugar (best ever! Makes your skin feel gorgeous. And I'm cellulite / obvious stretch mark -free so maybe it's helped there?? Can't prove this though! haha)
Andddd I put in on my ends when my hair is super dry.

I can't say it's a super food for weight loss. But it's definitely super handy!
It is apparently easier to digest and a healthier fat. But I'm not a big 'cover everything in oil' person anyway so probably doesn't make a huge impact on my diet as a substitute.

I've tried it and liked it.

I don't think it has any particular magical properties, however.

It is useful as a monosaturated fat just as is olive oil. It has a higher smoke temp than olive oil, however (and it is at its smoke point that fats are degraded and become hydrogenated. Hydrogenated oil is transfat and transfat is the bad fat . Other fats have their good points and fat is necessary component in the diet. Transfat, however, is bad. Avoid it as much as you can. ...So a oil reaching its smoke point is bad regardless of which particular oil it is. Which is why there are some applications (higher cooking temp) where coconut oil is preferable to virgin olive oil. That said, coconut oil doesn't have a particularly high smoke temp (despite being higher than extra virgin olive oil) so the higher the cooking temp, the better to use a different oil that has a higher smoke temp. Ultimately, the question of the value of using coconut oil is that it depends on the application. Sometimes it's better. Sometimes it is worse. Just avoid hydrogenated oils/trans fat as much as you can.

(And plantains cooked in coconut oil are delicious.)