Sustainable Initiatives by Andrea Dean

Eat Locally Grown Day: Day 23- My Experiments with Food Truth- 60 Days of Eating Locally Grown


Today was North Kohala Eat Locally Grown Day at our local restaurants and markets. I started the day the Hawi Farmers Market where I bought pickled beets from Lokahi Farms, dried bananas and dragon fruit from Jim Parker and honey from Sage Farms. I had a few hard boiled eggs and my locally grown green tea in the morning before heading to the market.


In addition to being North Kohala Eat Locally Grown Day, it is also my son Kanoe’s birthday. I interviewed him about how he felt about that.





I went to all of our participating restaurants and stores during the day and sampled the local specials. I had to cheat a little at some places because not all of the ingredients were 100% local, but were predominately locally grown or sourced ingredients.





I had dinner at Sushi Rock, where eight of us made up an “Eat Local Swarm”. Owner Peter Pomeranze placed a note to diners on the table that highlighted North Kohala Eat Locally Grown Day and explained about how Sushi Rock always sources locally grown and caught ingredients. I had the local goat cheese salad and the Bountiful Big Island special roll that featured local corn and pumpkin. The fish at Sushi Rock is always local. Someone else at our table ordered the “Men Who Stare at Goat Cheese” appetizer. A special treat was the locally grown wasabi- Hello! It was awesome! Being that we try to promote local farmers we wanted to know who grew it.. but Peter told us he is sworn to secrecy.

Abalone, Salt and More at Fish Farmers Market: Day 22- 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!


This afternoon I went down to the Fish Farmers Market at NELHA. NELHA stands for the Natural Energy Lab of Hawaii Authority and is home to a variety of aquaculture, renewable energy, science and educational ventures. The primary attractions are access to deep sea water (which is pumped up to NELHA) and abundant sunshine. Tenants grow abalone, hirame (Japanese flounder), shrimp, Kona Kampachi and probably more that I don’t know about. In addition to farmed fish, Bite Me! was selling wild caught ahi, mahi, ono and opakapaka. Sadly, the lobster tail and crab that Kona Cold Lobster was selling was imported from the mainland. Of course the best way to obtain lobster is to have some hunky man crawl out of the dark sea, lobster in hand. The lack of local lobster was made up for by the presence of Big Island Abalone. I have only rarely eaten abalone. The last time I thought I had abalone was at Roy’s. It was served with mushrooms and I thought I was eating the abalone, but it turned out that I was only eating the mushrooms and my friend had eaten all of the abalone.





My friend Guy Toyama stoked me out by giving me some Kona Sea Salt, which is also made at NELHA by dehydrating the deep sea water. It is a really delicious gourmet finishing salt- meaning you don’t cook with it, you add it on at the end.





Lotus Cafe’s Howie Simon was also at the market selling fresh pressed sugar cane juice with ginger and lime, lilikoi juice and heirloom tomatoes. The Lotus Cafe tries to be as local and organic as they can possibly be. Howie has been able to save money and provide fresher better tasting food by growing some of what they need and by processing their own coconuts.





I am not a meat eater, but the smell of the locally made Island Thyme Gourmet sausages was very tempting. Dan and Clare Bobo make the sausages from local meat, but they do use a small amount of non-local pork. Dan talks about how they can’t source local, certified pork. Which was surprising to me, given the prominence of pork in the local diet.

SPAM Flavored Nuts and Oil: Day 20- My Experiments with Food Truth- 60 Days of Eating Locally Grown


Today I went on a quest for macadamia nut oil and ended up taste testing nuts. The flavored nuts make great locally grown munchy snacks (except for the SPAM Nuts.) This is not for the purist- there is a light dusting of mysterious flavored power on the nuts. Honey Mustard, Wasabi (my favorite) and, of course, SPAM flavored.





I also scored the oil. I called the Hamakua Plantations macadamia nut company the other day to see if they had oil. The nice person in the visitor center told me that they carried Oils of Aloha mac nut oil and that they knew it was local because they sold them nuts. I called Oils of Aloha and they assured me that all of their macadamia nuts were from Hawaii. The oil was expensive- I bought a case and it was $7 a bottle, so I spent $84 on mac nut oil. In this case, buying locally grown is clearly more expensive than a non-local alternative like olive oil. I have no doubt that in order to pay the farmers fairly for the nuts, pay employees and make a profit- the oil has to $7 a bottle. Right now, local oil is a specialty item, not a commodity. Might we develop a local oil industry? Do we want to? Other possible local oil sources are coconut oil and avocado oil.

The Devil Made Me Do It: Day 19- My Experiments with Food Truth- 60 Days of Eating Locally Grown


There was a local beer tasting down at Lighthouse Liquors today (Lighthouse Deli is one of our North Kohala Eat Locally Grown participants!). Rebecca Villegas from Kona Brewing Co. came out to Hawi to conduct the beer tasting. I knew that the beer was not 100% local, but the Devil Made Me Do It! How good can a girl be? I stuck to the Pipeline Porter, because that was the most local of the beers that were on hand. (I only had a little, I swear!) The Pipeline Porter uses locally grown coffee, is brewed in Kona and was bottled from the tank into a growler. The other beers in the tasting were in bottles, which are brewed and bottled on the mainland. Kona Brewing utilizes a lot of local ingredients in their food and beers.

Honey, Tea or Me?: Day 17- 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 met up with the Green Power Heroes to march in the Honokaa Peace Parade. The great thing about going to Honokaa (besides the fact that the parade was totally cool) was that I could get some tea and honey from Ahualoa.

Mauna Kea Tea Garden

Kimberly and Takahiro Ino grow and process their own teas, their company is Mauna Kea Tea. Now I can stop cheating on my tea! And what is tea without honey?I realize some tea drinking purists will cringe at the thought of me putting honey in my premium green tea, but I love it. And it is not just any honey, it is Richard Spiegel’s organic white honey. Not a day goes by when I don’t start the day with honey in my mouth praying for only sweet words.

Other delights today included a very creamy avocado, purple sweet potatoes, kabocha squash, salad and more mango mango mango!