It's Thyme

Hello again! I can't believe how much time has lapsed since the last time I posted anything. The truth is, for a while there I didn't feel like there was anything particularly interesting to report and every time I sat down to write I was left with a blank screen looking back at me. Everyone goes through a little writers block once in a while so I took a break and just went to camp and played all day with the awesome group of kiddos and co-workers (including my sister!) I got to spend a month with.

Once camp ended, I started thinking about writing again, but I just wasn't feeling very inspired, I hadn't done much in the garden lately, and so much has changed since the beginning of the summer I wasn't sure what to write. But before I got overwhelmed and gave up again, the thyme, an herb I have become particularly well-acquainted with lately, the thyme patch next to the garden gate broke out with these beautiful clusters of tiny purple flowers. I wouldn't have noticed it except there were a handful of bees buzzing around as I went to open the gate to check on the tomatoes and pick some kale for dinner. The flowers, and the fuzzy bees that were so attracted to them, stopped me in my place. I didn't know thyme flowered at all, and I had no idea how pretty they look when they do. I learn something new every day.

Now it's already the middle of August and summer is quickly waning. There is so much happening in the garden right now and I am in for a busy next few weeks just trying to cook and preserve as much as I can so it doesn't get wasted, though all this extra compost and leaf litter will make wonderful compost for next year's garden. As I mentioned, I've taken a particular interest in using the herbs we have in the garden this year. I am plenty used to things like fresh basil, cilantro, and parsley, we used them almost every day in Hawaii, but I've done little with fresh tarragon, thyme, mint, and oregano, the herbs that are so plentiful in our current garden.

As I learn more about herbs, the more I am falling in love with them for their versatility and effortless growth, but also for their simple beauty and powerful fragrances. I have started to toss a handful of at least one of our regular fresh herbs in my saute pan to add some extra flavor and nutrients. At first I was transfixed by tarragon's licorice-like flavor and started trying it in my potato salad (delicious) and my egg salad (not so good). When I tried adding a huge handful of fresh thyme leaves along with the mayo and red onions and the remaining chicken I had roasted earlier in the week, I unlocked this pretty little herb's true potential. Get yourself a little thyme start for your kitchen window, if for no other reason than to make this chicken salad (seriously, no other ingredients, just chicken, thyme, red onions, and mayo, not even salt). Trust me, it's worth it. I'm in love. Over sixteen years I was a vegetarian and now I am in love with thyme chicken salad. But try it, you'll understand. Dylan did.

I have also found a handful of fresh thyme the perfect way to compliment a stir-fry of onions from the garden and bulk sausage we've developed a fondness for from the Dorset Farmer's Market (Lewis Waite Farm in Upstate NY), particularly when tossed with whatever green veggie (kale, zucchini, spinach, chard, broccoli, etc) and maybe a few halved cherry tomatoes atop a bed of rice or mixed with some pasta. Seriously, I can't get enough thyme. It's fresh and clean, yet earthy and almost minty fragrance, it's beautiful and perfect little green leaves, and it's many, many uses. Apparently it's often used to make mouthwashes and can help battle melancholy when used as aromatherapy. After nibbling on a few leaves, I definitely understand the oral health care benefits and whenever I am around thyme I do find myself feeling a bit more content. But honestly, even if that's all in my head, the culinary uses of this herb alone are worth the tiny bit of effort it takes to keep a thyme plant alive and healthy. I never want to live without one (or a million) of these little guys again.

The Real Garden Burger

This week we brought some new life to the main garden. A bunch of the brassicas were taken over by aphids so we harvested and pulled all the broccoli and cauliflower plants and bunch of the kale so we could replenish the soil with nutrients. Because so many of the same family of veggies had been planted in the same beds they attracted too many of the same kinds of bugs. All the plants began to suffer save for a few very strong kale plants which we kept. So once all the old plants were ripped out we did a bit of soil repair. About two weeks ago we all got together and planted a bunch of starts, so once the soil was ready we added them to the ground along with some radishes and carrots which needed to be planted directly in the beds.

In a few short weeks we will have tons of delicious new veggies, and because we planted them in alternating bunches we can hopefully avoid the same infestation problem. Anyway, while this means new foods to cook with in the future (I am especially looking forward to the radishes which only have a three week growing period), this means that we will have a much more limited selection of produce to work with until the new plants come in. Since we rely on the garden for the majority of our food each week, this means we are going to have to get creative with what we do have. Luckily, our hosts provide us with a bunch of bulk staple ingredients, such as brown rice, oils and vinegars, salt and pepper, red lentils, dried black and red beans, flour, and some canned tomatoes and tuna, along with a few other items.

Getting creative with food is a favorite activity of ours so naturally we welcomed the challenge. Like I so often do, I immediately turned to my Pinterest food board for ideas and stumbled upon a recipe for brown rice and black bean burgers. We have both of these things! I shouted, thrilled at the idea of anything burger-like, and tapped Dylan repeatedly on the arm until he turned to check out the recipe. After being with me for close to six years now, Dylan has become a fan of veggie burgers and right away he was on board with the recipe. We both agreed that this would make quite the nice addition to our weekly menu.

Dylan works the ingredients into a dough

From there we let our imaginations run wild at the thought of burgers and began to piece together Saturday’s adventure in the kitchen. With so many tomatillos on hand from the recent harvest (those also got torn out and replaced this week), we decided that we could turn some of them into ketchup to go with our burgers. Mayo goes great with veggie burgers too, and when we decided we wanted to treat ourselves Dylan shocked me by offering to make it since we have an unlimited supply of farm fresh eggs and olive oil from our hosts. Normally Dylan hates making emulsions, but since we’re trying not to spend any money and attempting to make everything from scratch with what we have, even he had a hard time justifying spending the almost 5$ it would cost us to buy a jar of the stuff.

We don’t have a working oven, just a two burner propane range until the oven gets repaired, so we had decided that we would buy the hamburger buns. Then our hosts decided to head out of town for the weekend and offered up their beautiful kitchen while they were away. We took full advantage. Dylan was so excited to test out some of the recipes we have been reading about in The River Cottage Bread Handbook and finally get some baking in. The stars were aligned this weekend we spent a marvelous day in the kitchen making the best veggie burger dinner we’ve had in a long time. Dylan got right to work when we returned from picking up some extra flour, yeast, and onions from the store. He started making English Muffin dough for Sunday morning (and the rest of the week’s) breakfast, along with another batch of dough for hamburger buns. Both doughs, the first simply water, salt, yeast, and flour, and the second requiring the same ingredients plus eggs and butter, were beautiful and we admired them as they proofed, rising at a visible rate in the humid Hawaiian heat.

With the doughs growing in the kitchen, we headed out to de-husk all the tomatillos so we could make our ketchup. Daniel, who lives in the other house on the property came down to dry the cocoa beans he had harvested at a friend’s farm and chat with us while we worked. It took close to an hour to husk many pounds of those purple and green things and Sasha the duck waddled over to see what we were up to just as we were finishing. While the tomatillos soaked in a vinegar water bath, Sasha followed us over to the chicken pen as she always does for the afternoon feeding. We got the ladies all fed in their coop, collected the day’s eleven eggs, and headed back to the kitchen to continue our work. The dough for the muffins, much lighter than without the egg and butter of the hamburger buns had more than doubled in size and was silky soft to the touch. Dylan rolled it out, cut it into squares, rounded the edges, and set them aside to proof again before being tossed onto the hot cast iron skillet just waiting to turn them into the beautiful and perfect treats they later became.

The hamburger buns were up next and went through the very same process. I rinsed off the tomatillos and loaded them up on a baking pan so we could roast them in the oven, the first step in our ketchup making endeavor. Dylan began chopping up the onions and roasted a few green chilies, also destined to join the tomatillos in a big pot to stew and become ketchup. Amidst all this, as if we didn’t already have our hands full, Dylan decided that one of the cauliflowers in the garden was so big that it needed to be picked right away. He headed out to grab it while I was instructed to research a marinated cauliflower recipe, so we could have it later in the week. I came up with this recipe courtesy of Martha Stewart and headed out to grab the parsley from the garden it required, along with an eggplant since we didn’t have the zucchini the veggie burger recipe called for. I also grabbed a few leaves of lettuce to go on our burgers and checked in on the black beans that we put in the crock pot that morning morning.

Bob Marley and the Wailers blasted from the speakers as we cooked away the afternoon. Dylan was quite busy with the ketchup and breads and my marinade was just waiting for the cauliflower to get a quick blanching, so I started wandering around the internet at the kitchen bar. Every time he bakes, Dylan gets this serious intensity about him, not in a “this is so stressful” kind of way, more of an “I am in the baking zone” and he remembers just how much he loves it. Back in Seattle when he was getting ready to leave the Confectional and was looking for a new job, we talked a lot about the idea of working for a bakery and though Dylan was all about it, there were no jobs available at the time. He did however end up at Ballard Pizza Co. which involved working with dough and this I think seemed to strengthen his interest in baking.

So as he worked with the dough we once again revisited the idea of Dylan as a baker. He handles the dough with such expert care and has just as much fun with the process as I have watching him work. So as we chatted, I did what I always do and began researching bakeries in our future home city after all of our travels and temporary housing is over this fall. I found a few interesting ones, including Big Sky Bread Company that grinds their own wheat, something that Dylan was super excited about, especially when I told him they use a stone grinder. Though I have no idea how that is different from whatever else is used to grind wheat, he seemed very impressed. We’ll definitely be practicing our bread making a lot more now and we will definitely be making a Portland trip or two to scope out the scene this summer while we’re living at my mom’s house in Vermont. It would be lovely to have Dylan home for dinner on a regular basis rather than at a restaurant most nights like in Seattle, so if any of you readers have baking connections in Portland, Maine keep us in mind!

Anyway, back to the kitchen. Where did I leave off? Oh yeah, blanching the cauliflower. At this point it was already six o’clock and the beans were not ready yet, the rice wasn’t even on the stove, and the ketchup had just begun to stew. We were starting to think we were never going to eat. At least the English Muffins were done and they were a work of art. I still cannot get over how perfectly they smelled, felt, and looked; just like the Thomas’s I’d always eaten when I was a kid, except better, of course, because Dylan made them. I immediately fell in love with these little round bready delights and my mouth watered at the thought of them tomorrow all grilled up and slathered with butter and the orange marmalade we made last week. When I finally did get to eat them for breakfast they were even better than expected. I had one with marmalade and one with maple butter and it tasted like the best maple doughnut I had ever had. We will certainly be making those again!

Back in the kitchen, our culinary adventure quickly kicked into high gear and in a matter of 30 minutes we had the rice simmering, another batch of onions diced and getting a quick saute along with the diced eggplant. I had the cauliflower dressed and packaged up, ready to chill in the fridge for the night, and was on to folding the laundry. Did I mention that we also were doing a few loads of laundry while all this was going on? I told you it was an epic day. So once the onions and eggplant had browned adequately, the black beans were added to the mix and the whole thing cooked some more. They needed a bit of salt and pepper but were otherwise turning out out to have quite a nice flavor already. We had high hopes for these veggie burgers.

While all this was happening on the stove-top, Dylan had the burger buns baking in the oven. They didn’t end up fluffing up as much as we had expected, perhaps they got a bit too much kneading or maybe the dough sat for too long, but either way it turned out to be a blessing in disguise. The buns were perfectly light and fluffy but thin enough so we didn’t end up with over-sized burgers and strong enough so they didn’t fall apart at all. Yet another baking success added to Dylan’s tally and another recipe to keep in our regular repertoire. Once the beans, onions and eggplant mixture was finished cooking, 2/3s of it went into the blender to form the sticky binding that would hold the rest of the ingredients together enough to form patties out of it all. Once they went through that final process and were all round and veggie burger like, Dylan fried them up crispy and they were ready to be dressed and enjoyed.

At this point it was about 8:30, the latest we have eaten dinner since we got here as Dylan is usually ready to fall asleep by then. We gave up on the idea of making mayo, saving that project for later day, and the ketchup still needed more time on the stove followed by a trip through the food processor and then the strainer so we gave up on having that with our first batch of burgers out of sheer hunger. Luckily, our hosts happened to have some ketchup and mustard on hand in the fridge so we used those to dress our homemade burgers and buns, added a little green leaf lettuce from the garden and admired our beautiful dinner and a full day’s worth of work in the kitchen. It was well worth the effort though because the burgers, though they didn’t hold together quite as well as the pre-packaged kind, were absolutely delicious. We still have plenty of burgers and buns left over and eventually we will get to the mayo and finish the ketchup and further enjoy our handmade meal. 
 
Now what else can we do with rice and beans while the new veggies grow, anyone out there have any ideas?

Comfort Food

view of the path to our home-away-from-home with bathroom and outdoor shower against the side of the garage to the right

On the plane ride over to Hawaii, I read Luisa Weis’ book MyBerlin Kitchen, in which she described feeling constantly homesick, half of her life being in Berlin, Germany, while the other half being in Boston and later, New York. To cope with the perpetual distance from half of the people she loved, half of herself, she took to the kitchen, finding solace in the food she could prepare that magically transported her to wherever place she was missing at that moment. In Boston she prepared Plum-Quark cakes and thought of her mother in Berlin. When in Berlin, missing her father, she ate “Depression Beans” like he made for her every week when she was a little girl in Boston. Weis so eloquently described a state of mind in which I have found myself quite a bit this week: feeling torn between so many lives and so many people scattered across the country.

It’s not that I’m necessarily homesick, per say, because I haven’t had a regular home for years, since I left for college really, but I am feeling increasingly nostalgic for the days when the majority of the people I love lived right near by. I miss being surrounded by friends and family and feeling like I belong in that one place and there is nowhere else I would rather be. Though we had friends in Seattle, we never developed a solid community. I had my school community, but it was an hour bus ride away and was more of a professional circle than a social one. Since college, everyone, like they always do, began to move away to different cities in different parts of the country and form new groups of friends. Eventually Dylan and I did the same, starting new lives in Seattle.

I still feel connected to all of those wonderful people from so many different parts of my life because we have worked to maintain our relationships from afar, but of course it is not the same once we all moved. I am not there for their birthdays, they are not there to take me out for a drink after getting a promotion at work, and we cannot get together on a random Wednesday for a potluck knitting night filled with endless conversation and wine. I miss those days desperately and I feel that lose here, in tropical paradise more than ever before. It is just Dylan and I out here, and don’t get me wrong, we are having a ton of fun together and our hosts are incredibly kind and welcoming. We are quickly becoming friends, but after missing it for so long, I am very much looking forward to the end of this year when Dylan and I make it to Portland, Maine and begin to plant roots, together, for the very first time in either of our lives.

I know I have said it before, but we are not exactly cut out for this transient lifestyle, Dylan and I.  Though I am so happy we stepped out of our comfort zones and left New England for a while, experiencing city life in Seattle and now 4 months of farming in the tropics, I have finally made it to the point in my life where I miss my home. This is not a place I ever expected to find myself and it caught me by complete surprise. I miss having a community of people who truly know us and are as excited as we are to visit with one another. I miss having history, of knowing a place inside and out. Our history is in New England. It’s hard to believe in 3 short months we will be back there, ready to plant our roots and stay, to once again have a home. New England, I hope you are ready to welcome us with open arms because we are coming back for good this time.

So while we can’t exactly tear into a fresh Maine lobster or my mom’s homemade mac and cheese, we are finding much solace in our little outdoor kitchen, bonding over the new culinary traditions we are creating here that one day we will replicate in a future kitchen, nostalgic for our time in Hawaii. We have spent an exceptional amount of time in the kitchen this week, so I thought I would share a few of our experiences and experiments with you today. I hope you enjoy reading about them as much as we have enjoyed devouring them. I’m sure I will say this many times in future writings, but the food here, and Dylan’s creative uses for it, is nothing short of fabulous.

You can hardly tell we chopped a huge branch from this basil

We started this epic week of food by chopping off a huge branch of our incredibly prolific basil plant destined to become a beautifully green jar of pesto, because what else is there to do with this much basil? Being on financial hibernation means no chance at buying pine nuts so we worked with what we had, macadamia nuts and skipped the cheese altogether. Let me tell you, pesto with garlic, a little arugula for an extra kick, and those delicious mac nuts all blended together with plenty of EVOO and a bit of lemon juice, salt and pepper is pretty incredible. We’ve had it for a week and the jar is half empty already. A big spoonful of the stuff on a slice of fresh sourdough bread from the farmer’s market is my new favorite snack (in fact I’m eating some as we speak). We’re probably going to eat a lot of pesto while we’re here because, well it’s delicious for one, and there is a seemingly endless supply of basil on this farm. 

Pesto is done and the kefir is beginning its fermentation process

In addition to the Mac-nut Pesto project, we also experimented with our first batches of kefir, a yogurt-like fermented milk drink with incredible health benefits. I’ll admit, I was a bit weary of this stuff at first, the idea of leaving milk to sit out on the counter for 24-48hours in a jar in the heat of Hawaii seemed wrong to me, but the stuff is incredible. In keeping with tradition, our hosts passed down a capful of kefir grains to us, which we plopped into a large mason jar and filled most of the way with whole milk and put on the counter to sit for two days. It worked like a charm. Despite our apprehension, and blended with frozen mango chunks, it made a mean smoothie. Since we had bought a full gallon of milk to work with, we ended up with about 5 batches of this stuff to figure out how to use.

Smoothies are a great option, but you can only drink so much kefir, so Dylan flipped through Wild Fermentation, an amazing book Libby and Mike passed on to us when we were in Brooklyn last month, and found a recipe for kefir-buckwheat pancakes. We didn’t have buckwheat, but we did have a few pounds of whole-wheat flour on hand, so we worked with that. These pancakes are the best pancakes I have ever had. Ever. They are so moist and chewy with a delightful sour tang and they taste great both drenched in Vermont Maple syrup and done savory with some spicy chilies, green peppers and onion scrambled eggs with a dollop of sour cream on top. Regardless of what you pair them with, these pancakes are delicious. I’m adding them to my growing list of “new favorite recipes.” Just kefir, whole-wheat flour, and water mixed and cooked on the griddle. Yum.

Dylan prepping the leeks & jar of kefir fermenting on the shelf

For our weekly potluck dinner this Wednesday, Dylan and I chose to share a bit of our Seattle experience with our hosts and new friends, while making use of the 4 big leeks that needed harvesting. Since there was such a small harvest, our hosts wanted the leeks to be featured at the potluck, so I suggested that Dylan and I make a batch of my favorite leek soup and she eagerly agreed, providing us with a big jar full of homemade chicken stock she rendered, unable to locate the duck stock hiding somewhere in her freezer. Dylan and I fell in love with this soup after our first Christmas in Seattle when we roasted a duck as our main course. It was my first whole duck since I gave up being a vegetarian earlier that year and determined not to let any of it go to waste, Dylan rendered stock with the left over bones and bits. We happened to have a bunch of leeks that didn’t make it on the Christmas dinner menu, so I suggested making leek soup with the duck stock. It was the best decision I have ever made.

There is nothing in this soup aside from 4 chopped leeks (the white and light green parts) and rich, homemade duck stock simmered together for about 35-45minutes. It didn’t even require salt. I love this soup and it will always remind me of that first Christmas in Seattle, our first Christmas away from home, and the year I discovered farm-fresh meats for the very first time, ending my 16 years of vegetarianism. Even with the chicken stock replacing duck, everyone loved our simple soup and eating it transported me to a wonderful time and place, providing some of the much-needed connection I’ve been missing lately. It warmed me thoroughly to be able to share a piece of our history with the people here in Hawaii on this farm we are temporarily calling home.

The tomatillos exploded this week after the rain, we could hardly keep up with the 5 plants... salsa verde is next on the list!

those are jars behind the hot sauce hold fennel we are pickling

Dylan was on a roll this week and also made a giant batch of tomatillo gazpacho, putting the mountains of green tomatoes to good use, along with farm fresh cilantro and green peppers, and chopped red onions, cucumbers, and creamy avocados from the farmer’s market in town. For my birthday last year Dylan made me a big batch of chipotle gazpacho lined with shrimp like a giant bowl of shrimp cocktail, so this cold tomato soup holds a special place in my heart. I seasoned this batch with a few drops of the super spicy hot sauce that we brewed this week using the Hawaiian red chilies that dot the farm like beautiful red Christmas lights, a fantastic contrast to the bright green and blue tones of the earth and sky here. Those little chilies pack a serious punch and there are so many of them that Dylan and I plan to make and bottle batch after batch to bring home as souvenirs when we leave.

Hot little Hawaiian Red Chillies, just like the ones used in Thai dishes, growing up on the terrace garden; those are pigeon peas dangling in the background that I mistook for edamame, they are equally delicious and buttery but a lot of work to shell

Oh and before I wrap up, I have to tell you that after two years of subjecting Dylan to kale, my most favorite green vegetable of all time, he has finally come around, willingly cooking and eating kale almost every single day now. I could not be happier with this new development in his culinary repertoire. When Dylan was working at the Confectional, back in Seattle, and had to open the market store on Saturday mornings, I used to make myself a weekly fancy breakfast for one. This comprised of oil and vinegar sautéed kale with cherry tomatoes, onions, and garlic, topped with a poached egg that would run it’s creamy yellow yoke harmoniously over the veggies. Dylan always mocked my obsession with kale, until now with kale being the most numerous plant on the farm. Now that Dylan has played around with it, he too has fallen in love with this versatile leafy green and I could not be happier.

this is just the main patch of lacinto kale, there are 3 other kinds and kale in 3 of the 4 gardens across the farm; also, that's our truck in front of Heather and Paul's house with the garage between it and our cabin on the left behind the mango trees.

Kale grows so easily, in just about any climate, and a single plant produces an incredible amount of food, making it a no-brainer for small farmers of a self-sufficient mind. Needless to say, we will be growing a lot of kale when we eventually get our own personal backyard grocery store planted in Maine. This week we have had kale under a blanket of scrambled eggs, a kale and purple potato frittata, and coconut-curried kale with blackened chilie-cauliflower (twice we’ve had that one now). We’ve had kale sautéed simply in EVOO with salt and pepper, in sesame oil with soy sauce and Hawaiian red chillies, and we’ve had it chopped finely and sautéed with eggplant. All this beloved kale makes the longing to plant our roots firmly in the Maine soil that much easier to manage. Well, that and the thought of so many of my favorite people reading this and sharing in our experience here on the farm. So I leave you today smiling and full of yummy food, and of course, lots of kale. Love to you all from hot, hot Hawaii.

Developing a Routine

It is Friday, February 15, 2013 and we have just completed our first full week at the farm. We are starting to settle into our lives here and have begun to develop a basic schedule and routine, which is nice. Having a routine helps me feel grounded and Dylan is feeling much more at ease now that he has a pretty good idea of what needs to be done each day and has, for the first time, been able to relax completely since we left Seattle and became essentially homeless. The transient lifestyle is definitely not for us in the long term, but being stationary here in Hawaii for a few months is not a bad way to spend our time, especially since we’ve had a few cloudy days to escape from the sun.

Aloha! This hammock makes a nice spot to relax at the front of the farm, check out those coconuts hanging from the trees!

So here’s a basic rundown of our daily routine thus far. We wake up nice around 6:30ish and slowly get ready for the day. I have never been one to allow more than 15minutes or so to get ready when I have to be up early so having over an hour is an amazing luxury that I feel like I missed out on when I was younger. I guess that’s one bonus of going to bed before 10pm every night, we can wake up slow, have a cup of iced coffee with almond milk, pick out what to wear, fill up and drink down an entire water bottle and fill it back up again, and eat a little breakfast. Oh and then spend about 15 minutes applying that all-important sunscreen.

At 8, I head over to the house to hang out with my little buddy K, while Dylan heads off to move the mobile chicken coop, feed all the chickens (there’s a second much larger coop with free-ranging fenced in area), and start his projects. K and I sometimes tag along and help with the chickens, she likes to toss them some grains and watch them peck around for a bit. Then we usually head back to the house and read some stories, or splash around in the water table or whatever else she feels like doing.

Check out that nice mulch work Dylan's done under the mango tree, lots of shoveling, he's doing all the trees on the farm.

This week, Dylan has gone from planting a border of lemongrass and comfrey around the perimeter of the garden, to mulching the mango trees. Since he spends much of his morning working independently, he’s started taking his phone out and listening to NPR podcasts while he works and zoning out in nerd-heaven. At some point in the day, little K decides it’s time to make “salads,” an activity consisting of ripping up pruned and discarded leaves from the front bush, and using them to fill a salad bowl that she delivers to Dylan so he can take a break from mulching to pretend-munch on her carefully prepared lunch. She loves this activity that came about as an attempt on my part to positively redirect her desire to rip the pages of her books, and now we bring Dylan about 2-4 salads a morning. It’s so cute to hear her say “Dylan” (sounds more like Dalyn) when I ask whom her salad is for.

When noontime rolls around, K heads in with her mom for some lunch and a nap while Dylan and I retire from the intense midday heat for a nice long sit, some reading, more iced coffee, and lunch. Every other day or so we brew a big pot of really delicious Kona coffee, put it in a big mason jar and pop it in the fridge so that we always have some of the precious black gold on hand to cool us down and replenish some of the energy the sun has inevitably drained away. Dylan makes the coffee on the weaker side so I can actually drink it (watered down further with ice cubes and a few tablespoons of almond milk) and so that the coffee lasts longer. Coffee is expensive here even though it’s harvested and processed next-door to us in multiple directions. Coffee flowers fill the air with a sweet, light fragrance all over the island; it is really lovely.

Some kitchen staples provided by our hosts include coffee, brown rice, beans, oils, vinegars, salt, tuna, spices (chili powder gets used most), quinoa, almond milk, dried beans of a few varieties, canned tomatoes and tomato paste, and salt and pepper.

Coffee is a big part of our morning, accompanying our granola, or quinoa with VT maple syrup (thanks mom!) and a fresh mango, papaya, or banana. At lunch, we pair our deliciously nutty iced coffee with a garden fresh, mixed-green salad topped with some combination of garlic greens, red onions, canned tuna, quinoa or brown rice, pumpkin seeds or macadamia nuts (my latest island obsession) When they eventually ripen, we’ll add some avocados into the mix. It is so hot that the idea of anything warm at lunch time is enough to kill anyone’s appetite, so we’ve stuck with daily salads to munch on as we sip our coffee and read and write for a few hours under the shade of our kitchen awning.

I love this part of the day. It is much like Europe’s Siesta I imagine, and it suits us quite nicely. Noontime hits and just as we all feel like we’re melting in the sun, everyone heads off to their respective spaces for a few hours of relief from the heat. Dylan rinses off since he gets pretty dirty working on the farm, and plops himself down at the table, chugs a bunch of water and opens his book (he’s already read 741 out of almost 900 pages of the Huey Long biography since we’ve been here!). Since his work is far more physically draining, I have taken on the role of lunch prep and pour us a cup of iced coffee, go out and harvest some greens and make our salads while Dylan gets his energy back.

I have been using my Siesta time to catch up on my Pinteresting, to upload pictures, and do a little education research and writing for K and the preschool project as well as for my other blog, Searchingfor Sparks. This week I also created a professional page on Facebook for my Ed. Blog so I can post more pictures, share links, quotes, and more of the resources I’ve been accumulating now that I have a few hours every afternoon to dedicate to it. Have I mentioned yet how much I LOVE being self-employed? I feel so much more productive than I have ever been! It’s great to finally be able to get caught up on all the reading, writing, and projects I was forced to put off when I was working at the preschool because I just didn’t have any energy left after an 11 ½ hour day.

Dylan, too, has taken to farm-life with great relish. Being able to work hard for a few hours and make a ton of visible progress, brainstorm and prep food projects, cook dinner and have plenty of time to read and write and philosophize, or whatever it is he does while I’m working away on my laptop, really suits him well. We’ve already been daydreaming and brainstorming ideas about making this kind of life possible once we get to Maine. Neither of us is particularly interested in being full-time farmers trying to make a living from farming, it’s too much work and our love of farming comes from our love of eating well, not necessary from working the land, though that is an enjoyable part of the process, it’s not the motivation. I don’t want to get ahead of myself so I won’t share the results of our brainstorm sessions quite yet (Dylan is constantly calling me out for doing this) but fear not, I doubt I’ll be able to keep my excitement under wraps for very long.

Check out those bananas up there growing next to the potting station in the main garden! These little guys are called "apple bananas" and they are so sweet, a little tangy and have skin that is yellow and velvety soft when ripe, I'm in love with them

Anyway, once we’ve had our fill of reading and writing, or rather, once we’ve cooled off enough (usually around 3-4pm), we head off to do something fun before it’s time to feed the chicken, collect all the eggs from the day, and start cooking dinner. Monday we headed off to the super shaded part of the farm to do some yoga, that’s right, I got Dylan to do a full hour yoga session with me and he actually enjoyed himself! Tuesday we headed into town in search of some items we needed, like flip-flops for Dylan, a nail-brush to get the garden out from under our fingernails, and a bottle of white wine to sip on. We lucked out and found a shopping plaza (after a lot of stressful driving and searching) that had a drug store that happened to have a decent wine selection. Rather than our typical preference for oaky, buttery, California Chardonnays, we opted for a light and refreshing Chennin Blanc, on special for 7$, perfect for our state of financial hibernation (thanks Dan Eling for coining that phrase).

Every Wednesday there is a farm pot-luck dinner and the theme for this week was “Greek,” though it was really more Mediterranean because I think only one dish could claim it’s culinary roots to Greek cuisine but, but everything was so delicious. It was cool to hang out with everyone on the farm for the night and get to know everyone a bit. Dylan made another batch of our farm-variety caponata, a tangy roasted eggplant relish, since we had an abundance of those delicious purple vegetables this week, and a big plate of sliced and grilled kalamata olive bread to accompany it. Others made humus, baba ganoush, whole-wheat pitas, beef kababs and yogurt chicken skewers with big slices of red onion and whole mushrooms. I stuck to the chicken and it was stunningly tasty, but Dylan raved about the beef kababs. We ended the night feeling satisfied, sleepy, and full of good food and good company. I think I am going to like this tradition and I know Dylan is happy to show off his culinary skills to an eager and appreciative weekly audience.

Harold H. Higashihara Park

Yesterday, being Valentine’s Day and all, we decided to head out on a little adventure. There is this giant, amazing playground and park we kept driving past on our way into town that I wanted to check out and photograph for Searching for Sparks, so Dylan offered to take me there. We wandered around this incredible play structure, with the ocean down the hill in the background and played like little kids, imagining how hard it would have been to drag us away from this place had we come here as seven year olds. It was a ton of fun and Dylan even agreed to snap a few pictures for me since I’m always the one behind and never in front of the camera.

After we got our fill of playing and photographing, we headed off to search for a bottle of Hawaiian rum to mix with the spectacular array of tropical fruit we have accumulated this week. We headed to Island Naturals, the local natural food store that happens to be closing its doors at the end of the weekend. We got a great bottle of rum and stocked up on a lot of basics like olive oil, granola, mixed nuts, and a few other things that were seriously marked down as part of the closing sale. We also picked up a ½ gallon of milk since our hosts are going to teach us to make Kiefer, a fermented dairy product similar to yogurt but more drinkable (and sour) and full of even more healthy bacteria. They make it all the time and mix it with the tropical fruits of the farm and it’s perfect for smoothies, not to mention the insane nutritional benefits. More on that once we get our first batch going.

This was the best cauliflower I have ever had!

We ended our trip to town with a delicious gelato at a cute, islandy sweets shop next to the market. We split a cup of “Moka Mudslide” that was Kona coffee flavored with mac nuts and chocolate chunks. It was so, so good, especially since it was the first sweet treat we’ve had since our arrival, except for all the fruit of course. Back at the farm, we made a tasty dinner of sesame fried kale and blackened chili cauliflower, both of which we harvested only a few minutes prior to cooking. We celebrated the day with blended rum cocktails with the papaya, mango, and passion fruits we gathered earlier and watched a cute romantic comedy called Switched with Jason Bateman and Jennifer Aniston. It was a lovely Valentine’s Day and filled with Dylan’s favorite joke, “hey, want to go to Hawaii for Valentine’s Day?”

So now it is Friday afternoon and it’s time to start the weekend off with a trip to the beach. It’s about 3:30 here now so here’s hoping we’ll avoid another sunburn! Who knows what we’ll do this weekend, so far making pesto and going for a hike are our only plans but I’ll be sure to let you know next week what kinds of adventures we ended up on!

I actually got Dylan to smile for a picture! Happy weekend everyone :)