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.

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.