Butter, baby: Day 5- My Experiments with Food Truth- 60 Days of Eating Locally Grown
It’s a good day on the local foods front when one scored LOCALLY MADE BUTTER! I saw local butter on Vivienne Aronowitz’s Eat Local Week Menu Ideas, but I didn’t know where to score it. A fortuituos meeting with Mala’ai Garden leader Amada Rieux brought me to the butter. Amanda led the way to Tropical Dreams Ice Cream at the Lalamilo Farms lots where I met Kevin Cabrera of Sandwich Isle Bread Company (No I didn’t eat the bread, although, believe me, I wanted it BAD). Kevin’s wife Kay Cabrera is making the butter, brand name Hula Cow, with Tropical Dreams. Tropical Dreams, by the way, makes delicious ice cream from cream from local dairies and local fruit! What better way to enjoy this creamy butter but on fresh local corn? (I admit I did eat a big glob off a butter knife first, it’s that good.)
You can buy the butter in Waimea on Saturday at the Parker School Farmer’s Market, Tuesday afternoon at Kekela Farms (down Mana Road on the left) and if you catch someone there at the Tropical Dreams office at the Lalamilo Farm Lots.
Today was one of those embarrassing haole days. After dance class (Nia) I stopped by the Hawi farmers market to do some connecting with people about the North Kohala Eat Locally Grown Campaign and to try to score some food, of course. What I got was local food, and an education in “local” local food, as in Hawaiian foods. I have always steered clear of “local” local food because I don’t eat pork, prefer brown rice and can not abide the calories in even one scoop of macaroni salad. However, I love real local Hawaiian food. A booth at the corner caught my eye…squid luau, opihi, limu and crab. Score! I ordered all of the above, but realized that I didn’t know what to do with the limu, opihi or the crab. I have had opihi and limu at luaus before, but they were prepared for me. I have never eaten the Hawaiian crab. Totally embarrassing! How could I have been living here for 20 years and not know how to prepare those foods. And worse yet, I don’t know how to harvest those foods. No wonder why locals give me the sideways eye when I talk about eating locally. I know nothing about eating “local” locally! Someone teach me please!
When I got home from the market, I delved into making my local lunch.
I recently had lunch at the new Village Burger in Waimea. Great “local foods” concept, great food and great service. It is so nice to know exactly where your food comes from!
Ahhh… trying to correctly warp the brainwaves of our youth. Assisting high school students with awakening the neural pathways to deepen understanding about how we relate to the natural environment. At least thats what I was trying to do in my workshop!
I facilitated a workshop called Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader on Cocoa Cola and Snickers? You can play or download the game that I created below. I played with the sustainability congress high school students, they seemed to have fun and the questions sparked some good conversation. I have three rounds of questions pertaining to what we eat and how that impacts sustainablity.
I was also able to lead the students to apply The Natural Step Framework to food issues we were discussing such as: factory farming of dairy cows and meat cows, mono-cropping of corn for the production of high fructose corn syrup and the import economy of Hawaii.
I participated in The Natural Step workshop here on the Big Island of Hawaii, out in Pahala, Ka’u at the lovely Pahala Plantation House. The County of Hawaii- Hawaii County Resource Center and The Kohala Center partnered to bring Natural Step Senior Trainers Sarah Brooks and Mike Purcell here to “train the trainers” or build capacity, as we say. We now have 30 people in Hawaii in various sectors of the economy who are trained in The Natural Step framework and all fired up about intergrating sustainability principles into strategic planning and decision making. More later on how I am using The Natural Step framework to strengthen green business in Hawaii.
