Sustainable Initiatives by Andrea Dean

Cuckoo for Coconuts: Day 16- My Experiments with Food Truth- 60 Days of Eating Locally Grown


Join the Eat Local Challenge (Sept. 25 – Oct. 3) for a meal, a day or a week!

I know that I already prematurely stated that mangoes are the most divine of foods and that I didn’t really need anything else, but I think that I also need coconuts, the second of the most divine foods. OK, OK… I can hear you people in my head already, coconuts are man’s perfect food, they must be moved into the number one position! If I was stranded on an island (hmmm….) what would I want to have with me? Coconuts and mangoes. And books.

In addition to the coconut, I also bought dried and fresh bananas from Jim Parker, one of Hawi’s long time farmers. Jim always has goodies- pineapple, ‘ulu, coconut, banana, mango. Jim often sells fruit which he dehydrates. One of the keys to food security is the ability to dry and store things when they are abundant.


I also bought some cool looking round, green eggplants from Dash and Erika from Uluwehi Farms and StarSeed Ranch, two of our “young” farmers who are also mentoring other young farmers.


What did I eat today?
Water of one large coconut
Fried taro and eggs
Mango, Mango, Mango
Corn on the cob
Greens from my container garden
Dried bananas dipped in mac nut butter (I had too much of that!)

 

Hamakua Young Farmers: Day 15 of 60 Days of Eating Locally Grown

Join the Eat Local Challenge (Sept. 25 – Oct. 3) for a meal, a day or a week!

Tonight I went to a pot luck up in Honokaa with Eden Peart and Ramona Gamayo from the Hawaii Farmers Union and Nathan Gonsalves from the Hamakua Young Farmers.

Nathan and the Hamakua Young Farmers are resurrecting an 11 acre site that is owned by Honokaa High School. When Nathan was in high school (he graduated in 1975) they had cattle, pigs, a mac nut orchard, green house and more. They provided the school with food! The site still has all the infrastructure and a great mac nut orchard and pasture. Nathan is pulling away the weeds and the inner beauty of the site is shining through!

We had salad, greens, pumpkin, mango and ahi! I cheated with some olive oil and garnished with salt that Eden collected from Ka’u! Eden sent me home with some Hamakua oranges. So many food gifts are showered upon me, I am totally blessed!

Salsa: Day 14- My Experiments with Food Truth- 60 Days of Eating Locally Grown


Join the Eat Local Challenge (Sept. 25 – Oct. 3) for a meal, a day or a week!


Today I went to visit Ming Wei Koh at the new Discovery Garden at Kohala Elementary School. I am working with Ming Wei to involve her students in the North Kohala Eat Locally Grown Campaign. There is a Dig In! workday at the garden on Saturday, September 25th, from 9 – 12 followed by a pot luck. Contact Ming Wei at kohmingwei[at]gmail.com if you want to help out. Ming Wei, who farms in Paauilo Mauka, brought me a jar of her farm fresh, local, home made salsa. Yum!

Boring: Day 13- My Experiments with Food Truth- 60 Days of Eating Locally Grown


Join the Eat Local Challenge (Sept. 25 – Oct. 3) for a meal, a day or a week!


Nothing very exciting happened on the local food front today. By that I mean that I didn’t get out to visit any farms, collect or eat any strange foods. All of the excitement was project based- I was busy working all day (and night!) on the North Kohala Eat Locally Grown Campaign, the Ho‘oulu ka ‘Ulu project and tying up some loose ends for Volcano Island Honey- all food related projects. I was so busy working on food projects, that today I only fed myself after I realized that I was starving. Which, for the record, is NOT a healthy thing to do. My starving myself has nothing to do with the fact that I am eating local foods, it is my own bad habit of not taking care of myself. As you will see from the list below, I ate great food. I just ate each meal a few hours later than I should have. Tomorrow I will try to practice better self care. Maybe I best start now with getting some sleep!


My menu today:


Scrambled eggs with taro hash browns
Salad with avo and cuke
Creamy broccoli and taro soup
Homemade yogurt with papaya and strawberries (thanks to Green Power Girl for the papaya delivery!)
Ono and kale
A few sips of mead (which may be why this blog post is not up to my usual standards)

Beauty & the Bounty: Day 12- My Experiments with Food Truth- 60 Days of Eating Locally Grown


I was on my way to chanting tonight and I spotted it on the side of the road. A sign…Fresh Fish ONO. I hit the brakes. Swerve off the road. Fling open the car door. March (walk? strut? sashay?) my way over to the back of the pickup. “Hi, I’m Andrea,” I say. And then I start blabbering at a million miles an hour about the eat locally grown campaign, etc… One of the guys is doing Take It Off Hawaii …they get points for eating locally grown foods! It is on my list to call all of the team leaders tomorrow to see if the Take it Off Hawaii folks might want to take the Kanu Eat Local Challenge. Anyway, one of the kind gents sold me a huge bag of fish for $20.


After sufficiently calming myself by chanting I stopped by to see my friend Richard Benton. Richard read about my 60 Days of Eating Locally Grown on Facebook and asked me to stop by his farmstead. Richard is an amazing gardener. Actually, gardener is not quite the right word. Richard is one of these amazing people who are attuned to plants, to water, to soil. The land and the plants are all happy. Thriving. Vibrant. Busting. Calm. Richard shared some of the bounty of his farm with me. I feel like a princess in a fairy tale where beautiful gifts of the finest foods are bestowed upon me.