Snapshots of April

My favorite monkey pod tree near Ho' Okena beach park.

April has been a busy month for us. A lot has happened and there are still 9 days left before May, our last month here. Hard to believe. Anyway, let me see if I can catch you up on what we've been up to out here in hot, hot Hawaii while spring is starting to take over back east. First of all, we booked our flight home, leaving here on Thursday, May 30th and arriving in Boston on Tuesday morning bright and early after a red-eye flight from Seattle. Long lay over, huh? Well we decided that since it was actually cheaper to stop over in Seattle, we'd make a 5 day layover in the city we called home just a few months ago. Be prepared Seattle folks, we are so excited to see everyone again before heading back east for good!

Anyway, our friend Jodi who lives in the pole house is a much better photographer than I am and she captured a few great moments from Dylan's birthday celebration that I'd like to share with you:

Dylan serves a few of our younger guests up at the pole house bar while I help little K take a peek at the French onion soup.

Toasting Dylan's birthday with Brenna, whose living room we occupy for our potluck gatherings, and a few other friends. That's Ali next to her husband Pete and their little one Phoenix who welcomed a new baby boy to the farm family earlier this week. Paul and Heather, our gracious and wonderful hosts are the heads you see in the bottom right corner of the picture.

Dylan and Daniel modeling their new aprons :) Daniel, Brenna's husband, is our resident farm fermenting fanatic and made the most delicious mango wine vinegar recently. He makes awesome kimchi and pro-biotic packed fermented hot sauce.

 In other news, Dylan tried his hand at surfing last week! He loved it but despite the massive amounts of sunscreen and surf shirt, he ended up looking like a lobster again, had sore muscles for days, and scraped the skin off a few of his toes from crashing into the rocks. He learned that surfing is a lot harder than it looks, requires a LOT of arm and core strength just to get out to the waves, let alone hop up and balance on the board. He had a great time though and I had a blast watching from the beach. Luckily I managed to snap a few pictures to share with you:

Dylan gets ready to paddle out with Daniel for his first ever surf lesson!

Riding the wave back to shore, Dylan said he was not at all prepared for how much surfing hurts your ribs. Looks fun to me!

Not a bad spot to set up camp, huh?

Just a week after this group outing to Pine Trees, a poorly named beach since it features exactly zero pine trees, the whole farm crew decided to gather here once again for a weekend of surfing and camping on the beach. This was my kind of camping. Most people backed their trucks up to the sand and slept set up camp in the beds of their vehicles, using big pole tents to shade all the food and beer. The air was warm with a light breeze, there was a gorgeous sunset and the moon lit up the beach beautifully. Dylan and I walked up and down the sand with no flashlight needed, the moon a more than sufficient nightlight. I dipped my toes in the midnight waters of the Pacific Ocean while Dylan watched the red-eye flights take off from Kona International Airport just a few miles up the beach. We fell asleep to the sound of the waves and slept on a soft bed of sand, mattress pads, and 2 fluffy comforters with a single top sheet providing all the warmth we needed. Car camping on the beach is my kind of camping. I could do that every weekend. Oh and did I forget to mention the two whales playing and leaping in the setting sun just off shore? Amazing.

Heather and Paul's VW van transformed into the heart of the whole car camping adventure, that thing has EVERYTHING!

My camera wasn't powerful enough to catch the dark deep pink shade of the sun as it touched the water, but it definitely did justice to the warm yellow sky as it began to drop toward the waves.

Can you see why we were so tempted to stay on for another year? It is going to be mighty difficult to say good-bye to HI.

Just a regular afternoon harvest from the garden

In addition to all the fun and adventures as of late the farm has been keeping us awfully busy, though I can hardly complain because it means we also get to be busy in the kitchen. This week we tasted our ginger-turmeric beer, which was disappointingly unfizzy and the turmeric overpower the ginger a bit too much. All in all, it was a good learning experience and I know we'll get it right with the next batch. In other news, we made another delicious batch of flour wraps and I actually made the dough this time! Dylan told me I earned my "we" in this story and I don't want to brag or anything, but we made a beautiful, soft, and basically perfect batch of 1 dozen wraps. If only I had taken a picture... oh well, I do have pictures of some recent harvests.

Since everyone was at the beach this weekend we came home to a very full garden. This is just what I harvested today, there are still plenty more where these came from. The garden has been booming the past few weeks, there is so much food!

Gecko wants some kimchi!

The beets started popping out of the ground this week, giving us more than enough to make a few bags of baked beet chips (I'll share the recipe when we make them, gotta test it out first). Dylan was busy putting the eggplants to use in another batch of caponata, stewed and canned two big jars of tomatoes, and loaded the Marlin Ceviche for this week's South American themed potluck with these beautiful red chilies. We've been snacking on beautiful watermelon radishes and Baba Ganoush all week and made the most epic and entirely farm-made breakfast wraps. We started another batch of kimchi, which is quickly becoming a beloved staple food in our diet, and I bought Dylan another Kalama's burger since he spent all day yesterday working down at the beach for our friends who own a  surf shop with kayak tours. Naturally he didn't pack himself a lunch so I grabbed burgers (Ahi again for me) and walked down to surprise him with some food and company. Turns out, the walk down to the bay is a lot shorter and a lot less steep than I thought and I'm mad at myself for being scared off my warnings of the heat. At least there are still 5 weeks to take advantage!

Let's hope mama duck Sasha can adequately protect her little duckling!

In other news, our lady duck, Sasha hatched a duckling and it is so cute and fluffy! We are hoping the baby survives the next few days around the male duck, apparently the males eat the ducklings and the mama ducks aren't always very good at preventing it. Talk about harvesting the male duck this week has begun and Dylan has been asked if he's interested in taking part so he can learn how to do it. More updates on that whole ordeal next time. In the mean time, how cute is this little duckling? Here's hoping we get to the big duck before he get's to the baby!

A Birthday Celebration

The drive down the hill to the beach was breathtakingly beautiful

Last Tuesday was Dylan’s 29^th birthday and we spent the better part of the week in celebration, starting with a trip to the beach. We took the day to ourselves and woke up slow, sipped some iced coffee, ate a banana each and finished off our batch of honeyed barley before heading to check out Ho’Okena beach at just before 9am. We had planned to go sea kayaking but we couldn’t find anyone or any signs about renting them, just a stack of rainbow colored kayaks resting in the shade. We were immediately greeted, however, by a pod of dolphins swimming in the bay, jumping and twisting and splashing about. We had been told that dolphins often frequent the waters at Ho’Okena but I hadn’t expected to actually see any. What a sight to see them so close playing around and sharing the beach just as we were. I have been dying to go back again ever since. Apparently pods of dolphins gather regularly in the bay there every full moon.

Ho’Okena has quickly become my favorite ocean spots in Hawaii, with its sandy beaches, quiet local crowd and beautiful soft blue waves. We spent the morning alternating between reading in the shade and floating along with the ebb and flow of the tide. Dylan brought the extra pair of flippers and used them to catch wave after wave, riding them until he crashed against the soft sandy shore. We splashed around all morning, savoring the cool ocean breeze as the sun warmed our shoulders. Compared to the heat of the morning air the water felt cold as I first ventured in, but Dylan assured me that after a few minutes it would feel like bathwater. He was right and I could have bobbed up and down in that water all day, watching the light dance along the surface and breathing in the salty sweet Hawaiian air. Dylan still has sand in his hair from playing so hard and I managed to find a new level of tranquility that I have been slowly building since our arrival on the island. Ho’Okena left me feeling renewed, despite the exhaustion from a day in the powerful sun.

Happy Birthday Dylan!!

As we packed up our things and sprinted across the piping hot sand toward the truck, we bade farewell to the dolphins, already eager to return again. We toweled ourselves off, hopped in the truck and begun our ascent up the winding road toward home, ready for the epic Kalama’s burgers I promised Dylan for his birthday lunch. About a month ago, I wrote about these burgers from the little shack at the bottom of our driveway, which left Dylan dreaming about them nearly every day since. He dubbed them “the best burger I’ve ever had, ever!” So to round out his 29^th birthday I bought us lunch, the first time we’ve bought any prepared food since we got here. Dylan has been talking about these Kimchi burgers so much that my interest in eating beef has finally been piqued. I bought Dylan his burger, a side of fries for us to share and two dill pickles. I still ordered myself an Ahi burger, which ended up being a giant grilled tuna steak sandwiched between a soft potato roll with some mayo and shredded cabbage and a million times more amazing than it sounds, but I bravely accept Dylan’s offer to try a bite of his.

First bite...so good!!

Each time I have tried a new kind of meat, one I haven’t had since I was eleven years old, the sensory experience has come flooding back to me in a wave of familiar flavors. This burger, however, was a brand new experience. I ate plenty of burgers back before I became a vegetarian but I had no point of reference for this one. I have never had anything like this burger. Perhaps it’s the pasture-raised Big Island Beef, or that the meat isn’t all the way ground so the texture is a little more steak-like, or perhaps it’s the sweet Kimchi juices that caramelize the outside of burger while it cooks slowly on the grill that makes this burger a culinary anomaly. Either way, I think Dylan’s description and admiration of the Kalama’s Kimchi burger is apt, it is definitely the best burger I have ever tasted. I’m even a bit tempted to order a whole one for myself the next time we treat ourselves to a Kalama’s lunch date. We’ll see.

That night, after a burger-induced afternoon nap, we worked on a few creative projects together at the table and snacked on some tortilla chips and fresh guacamole for dinner since we were still mostly full from lunch. Dylan’s birthday celebrations carried over into our Wednesday farm potluck, a French theme of his choosing. We all decided to make it a fancy dress dinner since French seemed to lend itself perfectly to such an occasion and it’s a good thing we did because this was a fancy food potluck if I’ve ever seen one. There was fresh handmade pate, a beautiful charcuterie plate overflowing with French sausage, salamis, prosciutto, smoked salmon, olives, sliced baguette, a triple cream cow’s cheese and a long-aged parm alongside a wheel of baked brie slathered with honey from the farm up the street. There were wine pairings with all three courses and entrees of salade nicoise, bleu cheese rib eye steaks, provenciale roast chicken (our offering), and L’ognion Lyonnaise (French onion soup).

I actually made them myself!

I made coconut macaroons for dessert to accompany the éclairs and other baked goodies brought by some friends who joined in on our feast. Everyone agreed that it was our most fanciful farm dinner yet, although it seems that every week we say that the bar for our potlucks is on an ever-rising climb to perfection. Wednesday left us feeling filled to the brim with delicious food and wonderful company. Dylan even received a birthday apron that I know he’s just dying to show off for you the next time I photograph him cooking. I think you’ll all come to appreciate it just as much as he does. I, however, will bite my tongue and let you enjoy the surprise on your own. I’m sure the wait won’t be long.

We hadn’t planned anything special for Thursday, but then a surprise care package arrived in the mail from some of my family in Vermont, filled with goodies from home. Among the contents was a gold box of Buttercrunch candies from Mother Myrick's, the sweet chocolate and nut covered butter toffee squares of my youth. It wasn’t until he sunk his teeth into one of these tasty treats that Dylan understood the excited gasp I let out as I pulled them from among the Green Mountain Coffee packets and mail. Noel, Dylan has been thanking you profusely for introducing him to these treats and blames you if he gains 50 pounds from eating them all summer while we’re living in VT. The Dakin Farms summer sausage added new dimensions to our typical sautéed kale and eggs breakfast as well as kicking our potato salad up a notch and we were grateful for the variety it brought to our meals.

Just a glimpse of the beauty of this place.

Before I skip ahead to our potato salad and Saturday BBQ at the pole house, I have to tell you about our dinner date on Friday night. We had long been planning for a Friday night out, since we’ve been here two months now and have not once gone out to dinner. For those of you who might not know us as well, this is a major accomplishment for Dylan and I. Following the recommendations of just about everyone on the farm, we decided to celebrate Dylan’s birthday with a romantic dinner at Holuakoa Café, a beautiful open air restaurant boasting some of the best food on the Island. We arrived shortly before sunset and snagged a quiet table in the corner looking out over the rest of the space. The gentle salty breeze mingled with the fresh mountain air among the light-wrapped trees and columns and the koi ponds and we selected a crisp, light Washington Riesling to compliment our mood and all the delicious fish we were about to order.

Over courses of Silver Snapper draped with a creamy leek sauce, a simple and refreshing blue cheese salad, and grilled Ono atop rich corn risotto garnished with crispy clusters of oyster mushrooms and lightly sautéed snow peas, we debated the idea of extending our stay here on the farm. Since I am spending so much of my time here helping get the preschool ready to go, and loving every bit of it, Heather asked us in earnest if we would consider staying and continue our work so that I could teach at the preschool once it opens and Dylan could get more into cooking here. We have certainly let ourselves imagine staying before, it is so beautiful here and we’ve melted nicely into the framework of the farm and the families that have brought it to life, but our musings were just that. We both joked about this happening before we came out here but never did either of us consider the fact that we might be convinced to stay. After two months, it is quite easy to understand why so many people we know here arrived on the Big Island with temporary intentions and years later cannot imagine life anywhere else.

Sunset over the ocean from the front house porch

It will be hard to leave here, to start over yet again, especially knowing that we still have another temporary stay ahead of us in Vermont before we finally settle in Maine. But after much and serious discussion, we both knew in our hearts that as hard as it will be to say goodbye to paradise, it would be harder to stay and leave behind our families, friends and dreams of Portland. I did not expect to fall in love with this place as much as I have, but in doing so I have come to appreciate New England all the more, for no matter where we go it will always be our home. So no need to worry, we will be continuing with our plans as we originally intended, despite how much we will miss this farm, this island, and all the people who have made our experience here so memorable already. These next few weeks, though they will likely fly by, will be savored and treasured for a lifetime to come. I am just glad that I became aware of the impact this place has on me while we still have so much time left to enjoy and appreciate it.

Potato salad topped with parsley & our jar of homemade mayo!

Well, now that the heaviness of that conversation is in the past, I can get back to our Saturday BBQ at the pole house, which is what we call the big brown house behind the main garden where we gather every week for our potlucks. We call it this because the ground floor is mostly open air, with large poles supporting the two-story house above it. Brenna and Daniel and their infant Eva live on the first floor and work here on the farm while Chris and Jodi rent the house upstairs. Heather and Paul, our hosts, live in the main house at the front of the property with Karuna, their daughter whom I work with. A few weeks ago we all got together to watch the pilot episode of the short-lived series Firefly, Ever since we’ve been dying to watch the follow-up episode but other things kept coming up. So to make an occasion of it, Chris and Jodi bought some local beef and invited everyone to join them for a BBQ and Netflix night. Dylan and I made potato salad, including homemade mayonnaise using the eggs we collected from our farm chickens. I had never seen him do this before and it was quite the treat. I tried another bite of Dylan’s hamburger since the beef came from the same farm that supplies Kalama’s. This one was spiced with our homemade hot sauce and stuffed with blue cheese and Dylan and I both agreed that it was equally as tasty, leading me to believe this burger phenomenon has more to do with Big Island Beef than anything else.

Plumerias at Ho'Okena Beach

We rounded out the week with a Sunday filled with food production and group harvesting of some of our most abundant plants. The eggplants are overflowing and so we went back to our tried and true caponata recipe, a spread of chopped and roasted eggplants, onions, garlic mixed with a few spoonfuls of tomato paste and a lot of capers and olives and finished with generous amounts of balsamic vinegar. This, I think, might actually surpass eggplant parm as my favorite way to eat eggplant, at least until the next time I eat eggplant parm that is. All week, Dylan had been feeding his ginger bug, a cheese cloth covered jar of water wit sugar and shredded fresh ginger in preparation for making homemade ginger beer using a recipe he found in Wild Fermentation, a gift from Libby and Mike that just keeps on giving. He boiled tons of ginger and turmeric together with honey, attracting a swarm of bees to our outdoor kitchen, and once the mixture had cooled he added the ginger bug and filled 9 empty Kombucha bottles with our homemade ginger brew.

It will take a few weeks for the drink to ferment but I am fiercely excited to try it. Ginger ale is and always has been my favorite sparkling beverage. I’ll let you know how this project progresses and in a few weeks we’ll know if it was worth the wait. Now that Dylan’s birthday week has passed and we’re heading into the last few weeks of our stay we’ll be working hard to fit in as much fun and work as we can. I am helping get the preschool off the ground and Dylan is soon going to start collaborating with Heather and I on a few building projects for it. We still have to visit Volcano National park and have a few more beaches to check out, not to mention lots and lots of cooking. I hope you all are enjoying the slow arrival of spring and a bit of warmer weather, it continues to be hot and sunny as ever here. I’m just glad we planned to end our trip when New England is getting warming up and turning green again so that by the time next winter arrives, I might actually welcome the cold.

Ho'Okena Beach, sandy beach and beautiful, lush mountains to the left and bright blue open ocean to the right... paradise.

A Bountiful Harvest

Last week Dylan spent an entire morning pruning the two tomato plants in the main garden. They were huge; an avalanche of leaves exploding out of the cages, but hardly any tomatoes. At least, before Dylan pruned the plants, that's what we thought. For as big as they were, we had only gotten maybe one ripe tomato out of the two plants and only saw a few more green ones. With a pair of garden shears, Dylan uncovered a wealth of green tomatoes that had been hiding beneath the leaves, just desperate for some vitamin D therapy. Within a few short days, I pulled out a handful of luscious red fruit, with plenty more left on the vine. I couldn’t resist popping one in my mouth, I’ve never had much will power when it comes to these things. I used to eat a pint of grape tomatoes each week as a snack or mixed in with my kale and eggs for breakfast back in Seattle. I love tomatoes. Just as I had hoped, these crimson beauties came about as close as anything to the Mountain Magic tomatoes Dylan and I gorged ourselves on every weekend they were in season at the Ballard Sunday Market. We just couldn’t help ourselves and for 6-8 weeks we spent the majority of our market cash on tomatoes. 

In addition to fresh sweet tomatoes, we also have suddenly found ourselves with an abundance of eggplant. We have the long, skinny Japanese eggplants as well as the dark, fat Black Beauties. I have been monitoring the eggplants' growth with little K, checking in on them every morning to see how much they’ve grown. Since she’s had family in town and I’ve been doing projects all week, it had been a few days since I last looked in on them. When I went out to see about the tomatoes, I peeked over at the eggplant bed and found armfuls of eggplants, many of them ripe and begging to be harvested. The plants themselves are so heavy under the weight of their plump purple fruit that many of the eggplants sagged all the way to the ground, vulnerable and in need of rescue. I snipped off the ripe ones to distribute between the farm families and propped up the plants so the bugs wouldn’t get into the littler ones that still needed a few more days on the vine.

Naturally, I am insisting that we make good use of these wonderful new ingredients and make eggplant parm, one of my favorite dishes. We have everything we need to make it, even the cheese thanks to Margaret, Dylan’s mom, who sent us some recently. Eggplant parm is one of my most favorite foods and has been ever since Dylan made it for back when we first moved in together in 2008. Before that eye-opening culinary experience I thought eggplants that had been fried, soaked in tomato sauce and covered in parmesan cheese were designed to be served atop a bed of spaghetti, as they did at the Olive Garden. Back when I was a vegetarian, that was about the only dish I ever ate there and I was a frequent customer before I met Dylan and was introduced to a new level of quality eating. I could not have been more wrong about eggplant parm. By skipping the pasta and pressing the sliced eggplants for hours before frying them, they stood on their own as a casserole dish loaded with flavor and just the right amount of crispness to keep them from being mushy. I will never eat eggplant parm another way now. Who needs the pasta when the eggplants steal the show?

Luckily eggplants and tomatoes are quite the complementary pair, so we are in no shortage of ideas for what to do with our garden bounty this week. Dylan plans to make what is sure to be a delectable batch of vegetable antipasti, plenty of tomato sauce, an excess of baba ganoush, and as per my request, some eggplant fritters, my latest farm food obsession. I blame Dylan for getting me hooked on fritters, he should have known I would fall for them. It all started this week with our potluck theme of soups, stews, and comfort foods. Chicken soup and potatoes au gratin had already been claimed and so we settled on skillet pizzas having been inspired with last week’s successful sandwich wraps. We figured why not try out a skillet pizza? So Dylan prepped the dough and eventually spun out seven 8-inch, thin crust skillet pizzas. We got all our toppings from the garden and I seized the opportunity to make my favorite, eggplant parm pizza with the long slender Japanese eggplant I had picked earlier in the week that needed to be used. Reluctantly, Dylan agreed. He knew it would make for a delicious and interesting pizza after all and the skinnier eggplants are far less annoying to prepare and fry.

I haven’t had a whole lot of this skinny bright purple eggplant, it’s not the right size for eggplant parm, but I’d had it in some of the veggie dishes at our favorite restaurants in Seattle’s International District, where our first apartment in the city was. There was this one place, Shanghai Garden right across from the Asian grocery store, Uwajimaya, where we always used to get takeout from. One of our favorite dishes was garlic roasted Japanese eggplant, a Szechuan style dish that makes my mouth water just thinking about it. Before arriving in Hawaii, this is the only time I can remember eating this style of eggplant but it has quickly made it onto my list of favorites now. I guess that’s a good thing considering how many of them we are going to be eating over the next few weeks.

Back to our pizza-making endeavor, these long purple plants were the perfect size for our skillet pizzas, coming off the frying pan soft yet crispy and about the size of pepperoni slices. I would happily never buy a bag of potato chips or eat a french fry again if I could have these little treats whenever I wanted them. They were so good one their own I could barely restrain myself from eating them all before Dylan had the chance to get them onto the pizzas. I think I am going to have to learn to make these little fritters myself because there is no way I am going to convince Dylan to make them as often as I want to eat them. Despite how good he is at making eggplant parm, it’s one of his least favorite dishes to prepare. Something about being too time-consuming and a pain in the ass...whatever, I stop listening at no and get lost wallowing in my own misery because I know I won’t be eating any anytime soon. It’s high time I learn how to do this one myself. They are by no means difficult to make, I’ve watched Dylan fry eggplants plenty of times, it’s just easier (and faster) to let Dylan do it. In fact, I think I am going to make a batch of them tonight. I’ll let you know how they turn out.

PS. Isn't this watermelon radish the most beautiful vegetable you have ever seen? I'm in love, yet again...

Desparately Seeking Sandwiches

“There is an art to the business of making sandwiches which it is given to few ever to find the time to explore in depth. It is a simple task, but the opportunities for satisfaction are many and profound.” 

~Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

Our inspiration

Yesterday I was browsing Pinterest, as I often do, and I stumbled upon a beautiful egg salad and avocado wrap. It looked so tasty and comforting and sent me tumbling down the rabbit hole of sandwiches, one of my most favorite kinds of food. Since we arrived in Hawaii, we have had exactly one sandwich each, turkey pesto back when Island Naturals had a turkey sale the day after we made pesto. As I showed Dylan picture after picture of melty, greasy grilled cheese sandwiches, BLTs loaded with bacon and added avocado, and cranberry chicken salad sandwiches, we both found ourselves salivating and dreaming of cramming stuff between slices of bread. Dylan begged me to stop teasing him with pictures of tasty treats that we won’t be able to make for another two months at least.

When we found ourselves without easy (and affordable) access to basic things like fresh baked bread, healthy farm-raised local meats, and an excess of condiments, sandwiches end up being edged out of the weekly menu. Don’t get me wrong, I’m far from complaining about the food we’ve been eating here, no need to feel sorry for us or anything, but Dylan and I have a passionate love of sandwiches and the lack of good ones in Seattle left us craving sandwiches like no other. We sought out mouthwateringly savory Italian grinders while visiting Libby and Mike in Brooklyn in January, followed by tangy Ruebens at Rein’s Deli in Vernon, CT with his parents, and then my childhood favorite veggies and humus on a works bagel at Bagel Works when we were visiting my family in Vermont. We got our hands on as many sandwiches as we could in the month between Seattle and Hawaii in hopes that it would tide us over until our return. Of course it did not.

Dylan rolls out the dough for wraps

Until yesterday, we had managed to survive just fine without our hearts and stomachs yearning for a loaded sandwich. That turkey pesto beauty on farmer’s market fresh sourdough, along with Dylan’s epic kimchi burger and the veggie burgers that we made the other week (which we made again Sunday), and all the amazing food here served as adequate distraction from the lack of sandwiches in our lives. But then Pinterest had to interfere and remind us of our undying, unsatisfied love for sandwiches. Save for the one day we had access to Heather and Paul’s kitchen while they were out of town, we have been without an oven, meaning no bread baking for us. We do have a stovetop however, and we’ve put it to good use making pancakes, tortillas, English muffins, and various other bread-like items, but we’ve yet to make anything that would yield sandwiches (Dylan has a thing against English muffins with anything but butter and jam, I think he’s crazy but whatever, I love the guy anyway).

Today, everything changed. Back when we first started making tortillas, I kept saying that I wanted to try making wraps, but we never had anything to put in them so we didn’t bother. Then we made Mushu pancakes for a Chinese food themed farm potluck and again I pestered Dylan about making wraps. He hadn’t been in the mood, as bread making does require a bit of time and effort, until today when the reality set in that the egg salad and avocado wrap presented the perfect cure for our cravings. This sandwich is something we could actually make without needing anything more than what we already had on hand. We woke up already thinking about our sandwich-filled future, drooling and eager to start the day.

What a pro, huh?

After we finished up our farm work Dylan threw the simple dough together, just flour water and salt. I peeled the eggs we had hard-boiled earlier, just a few minutes after collecting them from the chicken coops. After the dough had a chance to rest for a while, he divided it into small rounds about the size of a golf ball and rolled them out using a Kombucha bottle since we don’t have a rolling pin. I headed out to the garden to collect some garlic greens for the salad and arugula to fill out the sandwiches. When I came back, also with a banana pepper that was begging to be picked, Dylan was tossing a thin round of dough like it was destined to become pizza while another one toasted up on the griddle. I forgot how much fun it is to watch Dylan throw dough. He is a true professional, making it look like the easiest thing in the world. I used to love going down to Ballard Pizza Co. to watch him work and sip on a cold pint of Spire Cider and chat with Dan and Brian. 

A few of the finished products

Anyway, while Dylan worked his magic transforming the doughy rounds into fresh, beautiful, handmade wraps right before my eyes, I set to work getting the salad ready. We didn’t have any mayonnaise and so I substituted some sour cream that we had left over from last night’s chili (thanks for the recommendation Libby!), which we brought to game night up at the Pole house with the rest of the farm families. Luckily, I had convinced Dylan to pick up some mustard last week, an essential ingredient in my egg salad recipe to add tang and cut down on the amount of mayo needed to keep the mixture moist. Because Dylan brought home mustard powder assuring me that it was cheaper and lacked all the weird chemical-sounding ingredients of the other mustards they had, I needed to add in some extra liquid and find a way to give this salad the tang it was lacking from all the substitutions. A tablespoon or three of white vinegar did just the trick.

The green stuff in the mix is chopped pepper for some crunch

I continued to mix the mustard and chopped garlic greens and banana pepper into the mashed hard-boiled eggs along with some salt and black pepper, while Dylan finished up the wraps, covering the steaming finished ones with a clean towel so they wouldn’t dry out. They needed a few minutes to cool so Dylan poured himself a club soda and cut up one of the limes we got for 25 cents a piece at the market this weekend to flavor it with. Six-packs of club soda have been on sale this week for $3.50 and so we stocked up on what we are considering a “luxury item” while we’re in financial hibernation. It’s amazing what you come to view as special when you’re trying to get by on as little money as possible. If you had asked me a few months ago when we were back in Seattle if I ever thought I could comfortably live off of so little, I’d have surely said no. But after almost two months of farm life, it hardly feels like a chore to stay within our budget and it certainly hasn’t lessened our quality of life in the least. Living with a chef though certainly makes eating at home every night just as appealing as going out to all the restaurants we used to frequent in Seattle.

It's not everyone's cup of tea but I love egg salad

While Dylan retreated into our cabin to have a sit, I made up our sandwiches. Dylan might be the chef in our little family but sandwiches are my territory. Sandwiches are about the only culinary task that I excel in but I take great pride in my abilities and so Dylan happily hands over this duty. I love being able to make food for him, since it happens so infrequently at dinnertime. I tend to be in charge of breakfast sometimes too, and I usually make us salads and snacks, but sandwiches are where I really shine. So Dylan relaxed with his soda and I scooped the egg salad onto the open wrap, carefully added a layer of sliced avocado sprinkled with salt and drizzled in our homemade hot sauce, put down a bed of shredded arugula and rolled up three dazzling wraps. Poor Dylan has been feeling under the weather lately and still worked out in the hot sun all morning and then went back out for another hour or two of planting starts and feeding the chickens, so he got an extra wrap. Plus he’s a guy and very hungry.

So how did they turn out? To say that they hit the spot doesn’t quite express how satisfying these soft little sandwiches actually were. This was my first time using the eggs from our chickens to make egg salad and despite all the substitutions these eggs once again reminded me of their superiority over any store-bought eggs I’ve ever eaten. Perhaps it’s because we are the ones feeding and overseeing the diet of these chickens, but I have never had eggs this delicious, not even the ones we used to get for 7$ a carton at the Ballard Farmer’s Market. The yolks are bright orange, creamy, and bursting with flavor and richness. It will be very difficult to go back to store-bought eggs after this, let’s hope I can find a farm near my mom’s house in southern VT this summer where we can get all of our egg needs met. As for Dylan’s flour wraps, they were thin, soft, chewy perfection, with just a touch of grilled goodness. Dylan might make fun of me often for my Pinterest addiction, and he might not be the only one, but this time even he will tell you he is thankful for it, the sandwiches were that good. 

ahh... delicious sandwiches at last

Pot O' Poi

Being that I am equal parts English, Polish, German, and Italian, I thought it would be best to allow the Irishman tell the tale of our Poi-filled St. Patty's day. We may be far from the Emerald Isle but we still managed to get our hands on a few bottles of Guinness and Dylan was more than happy to take on this post...

It was St. Patrick’s Day this weekend, and for once I was not awash in a sea of red-faced Caucasians. Sure there are some here, but they are mostly retirees with sunburns. Ireland is the only nation in the world to have a lower population than it did 200 years ago, we all left when the potatoes went bad so I am certain that there is a McHatley’s pub somewhere on the island. It’s harder to imagine the dark paneling and high windows, the old men at the bar’s corners drinking steadily and quietly. More likely it is open to the air, fresh and sunny, and there are two men at the bar with Bushmills talking about the breaks on the North shore. Even an Irish bar, a seemingly universal constant, must be turned Hawai’ian.

This is the taro root, only slightly improved by a washing

That’s OK. I’m all about diversity. I’m sure they don’t get it exactly right in China either. I don’t miss the crowds on cold evenings in March, or the marketers’ attempts to make us all look like leprechaun billboards. Green beer is a terrible idea and the reckless stupidity of amateur drinkers is enough to make me question us as a species. I don’t miss many of the trapping of this commercialized holiday, but there is one thing that I long for deeply this time of year—corned beef and cabbage.

The things that we do not have are often what we want the most. I’m sure I am stepping on some self-help guru’s toes by spouting this simple cliché, but it is obviously true. St. Patrick’s day was officially recognized as a Christian feast day in the early seventeenth century, to commemorate the death of Saint Patrick, the arrival of Christianity in Ireland, and more broadly as a celebration of Irish culture and heritage. I have never heard someone at a bar on St. Patrick’s Day toasting to the downfall of the druids or seen a drunk college student trying to explain the holy trinity to some pagans by waving a glow-in-the-dark shamrock. Rest assured these are both activities that I will try next year. So, like many American holidays, we have stripped St. Patrick’s Day of its historical connotations to make it palatable and appealing. It wasn’t always a day of booze and drunk sincerity… or maybe it was.

It’s March in Ireland in the early 1800’s. It is still cold and it seems as through you have been damp since September. Maybe you live in the country; the sun is struggling and failing to break through the clouds, you smell like 6 months of peat smoke and sheep shit and you are trapped inside with way too many people on those long nights. Maybe you live in the city; there is a dense haze of coal smoke, you work in a factory that is trying its best to maim you and after work you get to go home to big meal of tea and old bread. Whatever your locale there is one condition that makes it all seem like a cruel joke; it’s Lent. That’s right, you can’t drink alcohol or eat meat. All of a sudden March 17^th comes around and the whiskey is back and there is corned beef everywhere and maybe the sun comes out a bit and you feel like you are coming out of hibernation.

Kind of pretty like beets; the skin gets peeled off after boiling

Strict religious dictums don’t have much sway in mainstream America anymore, but a little revelry after a long winter is something we can all cozy up to. I know what you are saying, “Shut up, you’re in the tropics, you don’t get to talk about the brutality of a North Eastern winter.” Fair enough. There will not be any beach pictures in this post. In fact, I will tell you that you are the lucky ones this time, your reward for winter is whiskey, stout and corned beef and cabbage. I only eat it once a year, but it is one of my favorite dishes, and the rarity is what makes it so special. Since the real stuff isn’t an option, I decided I would try my best to recreate it with whatever we had at hand. Suffice it to say, the tropics is not the land of meat and potatoes.

I’ve developed a process for converting recipes to Hawai’ian. Break all the component parts down as far as you need to go until you get to a point where you can substitute something you have on hand for whatever is missing. It is not an exact science, and often leaves big gaps, but I like a challenge and living here I try not to require ingredients that are too far flung. Right away, corned beef is out. It is a sad thing, and really how can I in good conscience cut out the main attraction? Sometimes you have to make sacrifices. Besides, there are some other things wrapped up in the dish that I can work with. I found a cabbage at the farmer’s market, real green boring cabbage. Perfect. Usually you have some other vegetables, often carrots. Easy, I have plenty of vegetables to work with. I make a culinary leap that would offend most purists and say that eggplant is kind of like corned beef. At the very least it is chewy.

Boiled taro blended into poi

So cabbage and eggplant and enough salt to compensate. Great. Next we need a starch. It is hard to compete with good mashed potatoes, but we dug up some taro last week and it was begging to be used. For those of you unfamiliar with taro, it is a tuber in the same family as peace lilies and skunk cabbage. Not the most appetizing of kin, and with good reason. Taro has an abundance calcium oxilate crystals, which look like glass daggers under the microscope. It is inedible raw and will rip up your throat and stomach if you try. If that wasn’t enough, calcium oxilate contributes to kidney stones. All this makes you wonder who the first brave souls were who tried this ugly root vegetable and liked it so much that, here in Hawai’i at least, it is a staple food. Traditionally, the Hawai’ians believe that the taro plant is the original ancestor of their people, and so eating it is a sacred act. Why anyone would consider an inedible tuber to be their spiritual forefather is an issue I will ignore out of cultural sensitivity.

 So I made poi. They used to make poi by boiling by boiling taro until it was soft and then pounding it out in a special dish with a special blunt instrument. I continued the boiling tradition, but traded the blender for brute force. Add a little water and you get a wonderful grey mush. Most cultures have their proteins gruels, grits, polenta, oatmeal, and some are certainly better than others. Poi is bland to the point of tasteless, apparently is custom to let people put their own spices in it so I didn’t add anything to it. Really it is just meant to be eaten with other dishes, so I can’t fault it too much. Anything tastes good with BBQ.

It was St. Patrick’s day in Hawai’i. We were sweating and eating sautéed cabbage and eggplant with generous spoonfuls of poi. You were wearing a wool sweater and eating corned beef and cabbage, braised in its own juices, with huge chunks of potatoes and carrots. You win this time mainland.

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?