Things You Stop Worrying/Caring About When You Live on a Farm in Hawaii

1. Dusty feet
   
2. Having bugs crawl all over you
3. Fences (no one minds if you climb their fence to get to the water)
   
4. Being abducted while hitch-hiking (usually you get picked up by a mom in a mini-van)
   
5. Goat shit
6. Wild boars
7. Tan lines
   
8. Boys (new ones at least)
9. Waking up on time (the goddamn rooster loves to crow right outside my window in the mornings and I in turn harbor fantasies of building chicken tasers)

***This post is dedicated to Jaime, McSweeney's and 826 Valencia Street, SF

Paradise

Remember how earlier I posted my ridiculous sillogism for moving to Hawaii? In case you forgot, I'll recap:
A) You can't be miserable in paradise
B) Hawaii is as close to paradise as it gets in these United States
THEREFORE
C) If I move to Hawaii, I will no longer be miserable

Apparently my attention was wandering during college philosophy class, because the first thing they teach you is that if you build your pyramid of reason on a faulty premise, it all collapses in a big rubble heap on the floor. I was probably distracted by boy troubles back then too. Sheesh.
All that to say that I was wrong...you can be miserable in paradise if you have the following:

• an overactive brain (for those of you who actually know how to relax, your neurotic type A friends will thank you for employing this euphemism)
• a serious case if heartache (again with the totally lame boy troubles)
• too much time on your hands

Which is not to say that I am unable to enjoy myself here. I really am happy to be in the sun and the water every day and am grateful for the time to relax and do something different. Most days I love everything about being here. But some days my mind will not shut off. I see the wisdom of those ancient pharoahs who had their brains pulled out through their noses so they could get some eternal rest.

I'm trying to see my heartache through a different lens so can I evict the crazy people who moved into my head a few months ago. (You know the kind; they're constantly repeating those sharp, painful words that have been said to you over the years, and playing back all the sweet moments in your life that make you ache with longing. These crazy people know all your soft spots, goddammit.) I turned to my old friend Hafiz for some advice and here's what he said:

What is the key
To untie the knot of your mind's suffering?

What
Is the esoteric secret
To slay the crazed one whom each of us
Did wed?

And who can ruin
Our heart's and eye's exquisite tender
Landscape?

Hafiz has found
Two emerald words that
Restored
Me

That I now cling to as I would sacred
Tresses of my Beloved's
Hair

Act great.
My dear, always act great.

What is the key
To untie knot of the mind's suffering?

Benevolent thought, sound
And movement.

Most days I find that I can manage to be benevolent in maybe one or two of these areas...for about five minutes...when I'm sleeping. But hey, it's a start. Like juggling, you can't keep all three balls in the air on your first try. And did you know that the word paradise is derived from the Arabic word for garden? Seems like at least I landed in the right spot, and now it's just up to me to tame my inner crazies and remember to act great.

Ode to Barbara

Barbara Kingsolver's books have followed and supported me through some very strange twists and turns in life. Three in particular I've come to associate with important crossroads. First is The Bean Trees. My grandmother sent it to me when I was a teenager and I devoured the story of a gal from Kentucky who decides to drive across the country with no particular destination and ends up making a life where her car brakes down in Tuscon. One thing that stuck with me was that a girl from the middle of nowhere would just get up and leave with no place in particular to land and with no one to greet her on the other end of the journey...ballsy and inspiring for a young lady with an active imagination. A few years later I did the same thing, driving from Ohio and ending in San Luis Obispo California, sight unseen, not knowing a single soul. I lived there off and on for eight years and that move was the single scariest and best thing that I've done yet. Also inspiring was Kingsolver's description of a spectacular plant, the night blooming cereus. I've always remembered the beautiful name that just rolls of the tongue and conjures up all this mystery and beauty when I roll it around in my mind. It's bright white bloom opens only one night per year and then closes again at dawn for another 364 days of obscurity. I'd never seen one until last week when my host brought one home for me. It was closed tight when he gave it to me, so I set it out in the moonlight and waited. It slowly opened into a gigantic bloom, bigger than both my fists, and gave off a musky scent like a lily. I could make literary allusions to the dark night of my soul, the angelic white beauty that perfumed my room that night, but I'll spare you from the final throws of my aborted literature degree. Let's just say that it was rare and beautiful and magical and something that I'd always wanted to see for myself.

A little while later, there was the Poisonwood Bible. It's an epic book, following a family of missionaries who travel to the Congo in the 1960's with disastrous consequences. It laid the seeds for my own break from my religious upbringing, something I'm still negotiating. Barbara tells the story five times from the viewpoint of five different women in the family and it's brilliant. That retelling is what made the book so important for me. I'd been brought up very religiously in the conservative Mid-West with one constricting perspective of how to see the world. No nuance, no room for interpretation and no questions. Seeing the problems that religious rigidity had causes for these fictional missionaries cracked open my own heart just a little and let in a bit of acceptance for my own questioning. Just seeing more than one side to story was a revelation and my soul began to wander outside the church I'd been raised.

Barbara's most recent work is equally apropos to my current life. I found a copy of Animal, Vegetable, Miracle at the little Kapa'au Public Library a couple of weeks ago and devoured it in about two days. In this homey memoir, Barbara recounts the highlights of a year of her family's life where they pledged, and successfully ate, only local food, primarily through growing and raising it in their backyard. Oh, Barbara, how do you always know what I need to read? Her latest book is a perfect complement to my little organic gardening adventure, and, as a bonus, has tons of great recipes for enjoying the harvest of your kitchen garden. Since we have an abundance of goat's milk here at the farm in Hawaii, I decided to try her recipe for mozzarella, which promised to be both quick and easy. I was skeptical, but in the end was won over when I had successfully made my first batch of super tasty homemade gooey deliciousness in less than 30 minutes. It's so easy, and here's all you'll need:

• A big stainless steel pot
• A thermometer
• Liquid rennet
• Citric Acid
• A gallon of unpasturized milk

There's a little boiling, a lot of kneading and presto! you've got fresh cheese. You can order the liquid rennet and citric acid from Ricki Carroll's New England Cheese Supply Company, and it's dirt cheap. Plus you get to pull the mozzarella in long strings to see if its stretchy enough to be done. What is it with Italians and their interactive food-readiness tests? Throwing pasta on the ceiling to see if it sticks? Stretching cheese like bubble gum? Crazy daegos...

So let's recap all the things that Barbara has guided me through this far:

1. Moving across the country
   
2. Learning to think for myself
   
3. Succor on my quest to mend a broken heart through gardening and eating
   

Really, Barbara, you're too good to me.

Kohala Farmers' Talks

I just got back from a conference on local farming in Northern Kohala. It was a big get-together for local merchants, restaurants, government representatives and farmers to spend a whole day talking about how they can collaborate better. But first let me tell the highlights of the day. There was this "Hawaiian version of Pan"-looking dude with a crazy huge hair and matching beard who showed up the session wearing only a sarong. That's right: no shirt, no shoes, just a thin piece of floral printed cloth and a big gap-toothed smile. To my great delight he stuck his "Hello my name is: Joey" tag directly onto his bare chest. Frickin' Hawaii. Joey was surprisingly well spoken and rallied a bunch of folks behind a campaign for life-time leases of 3 acre parcels to aspiring young farmers.

The farmers here have a ballsy goal of getting consumption of local agricultural products up to 50% in the Kohala community. A brilliant idea, but clearly the conference is just the first step. At the moment 70% of food grown in the area is shipped somewhere else. Only about 2% of food sold in restaurants and grocery stores is produced locally. Sadly, this is not at all unusual. Most of the produce, meat and dairy all over the country is shipped from somewhere else. It seems like eating is just a big game of musical chairs and I wonder how on earth it is more financially viable to ship your food all over the world, rather than eat it where its grown.

At the conference they touched on all sorts of issues concerning the local food industry and it turns out that one of the biggest is simple communication. The local merchants simply don't know what the farmers have to offer, and the farmers don't know what the merchants want them to be growing. Everyone, it seems, is idealogically on board with eating locally, which was a big shocker to me. Some were even willing to pay a premium for local foods. It's a miracle that no one needs convincing of the inherent value of a locally based food system. I think that because these folks live on a island, they have a deep understanding of the importance of self-sufficiency. That, and there's a whole lot of pride for food in these parts. Everyone seems to just love the papaya, sweet potato and guava that grow here so easily. They even like taro, which I cannot understand. I was super impressed by the tenacity, ingenuity and excitement of these folks for food and sustainability.

And what would a farming conference be without a fresh, local lunch? Our afternoon repast was 98% sourced from North Kohala (the only thing they bought was coconut oil, since no one processes that around here). It was a beautiful spread of everything from bean and potato salad, ceviche from some delicious local fish, three kinds of pork from a wild boar, poi, squash pie, beautiful big green salads and trifle of lilikoi and mango, and that's just what I can remember. My fellow WWOOFers and I contributed to the lunch by making sugar cane juice for the lilikoi lemonade.

Its criminal how many foods I regularly eat which I have taken so little time to think about. Sugar is one of them. It's in everything, and I never had any idea what kind of processing is behind it, or even what kind of plant it comes from. I guess vaguely I knew that it came from sugar cane, but what that looks like or how it grows are things I'd never considered. Yesterday we harvested some cane (it takes about 4 years of growing to get to harvestable size), cleaned it, split them for the juicer and then pushed it through this gigantic press which extracts the juice. The result is really sweet and sticky light brown juice that is only good for about 3 or 4 days. The sugar cane is actually a tropical grass, about the same size and shape as bamboo, but the inside is really hard, fibrous flesh that is super sweet when you chew on it. I snacked on a bunch while I was splitting the canes. A wheel-barrow full of canes made about 3 gallons of juice.

So, I wondered, how do you get white sugar from all this juice? Does it form crystals when you dry it? Is it dehydrated at high temperatures? I did a little research, and found out that it involves both of these things and, sadly, lots of chemicals, including sulphur dioxide, which remains in high levels in white refined sugar. Seems like it has more in common with meth than any plants when its done being processed. Which is not to say that I'll stop eating it, just noticing the similarities is all. And the cane juice mixed with lemon and lilikoi sure was heavenly. And I think its so damn cute that they call passionfruit lilikoi here on the islands. Doesn't it just sound more delicious in Hawaiian?

Ghost Stories

I went to dinner last night at the home of some new friends, Piikalama and Noeau. (Noeau is our fearless leader for the garden project at the lodge.) We sat on their lanai and had a wonderful dinner of poached fish, pickled lemon rind, beet salad and tasty beer. It rained off and on and made some pretty music on the tin roof with a huge windchime playing backup. As we sat and ate and talked, the night got darker and finally it got really dark. I haven't seen a streetlight yet on this part of the coast and it was a new moon, so it got to be deep, dark and inky really fast. We started talking about the night and the rain and Noeau said in an off-hand way, "Don't wander around on a new moon. I could tell you ghost stories..." I wasn't going to let that opportunity pass me by, so I pressed her for details. Noeau practices la'au, the Hawaiian art of using plants for healing. She's been learning this sacred practice for over 10 years and has got some serious connection to the land, and I was sure, a good story about some spirits she'd encountered.

The tale she told me was about a walk that she took a long time ago in the afternoon on a new moon. Her daughters were little and they lived on top of a remote gulch with only one other neighbor. Every afternoon, Noeau would take a walk down to the gulch to say hello to the bees, visit a sacred stone and practice her la'au. So she told her kids she'd be back in an hour and went out on her daily walk. On this particular afternoon, she was walking with her dog and somehow managed to get lost in the bamboo grove she walked through every day on her way to the bees. Her dog successfully led her out of the bamboo and she went on to visit the hive she said hello to every day. Only on this afternoon, the bees started flying at her as soon as she approached, not stinging her, but butting into her with their small bodies. Normally they were friendly and she could sit with them for a while. She thought this and getting lost in the bamboo were odd, but didn't make much of it and moved on to visit her stone, but it wasn't there. It was a big stone, bigger than a bowling ball, but today it had moved. Also strange. So she kept going and went down to her spot at the bottom of the gulch to say her prayers for la'au. When she came back up, the cows were doing something strange. They were all in a perfect line from one side of the gulch to the other, with a big red steer at the front. And all of them were staring at her, not blinking, not moving, just staring. She had her faithful pup with her and tried to get her to chase the cows off, but the dog just whimpered and ran away. So Noeau took a big stick and started walking towards the cow, waving the stick and trying to herd them up the gulch. At this point all 200 cows started to charge all at once. Noeau had no choice but to run back down to the edge of the gulch and jump off the end, down a steep cliff and hang onto the throny plants on the side so she didn't fall straight down. She looked up and there were the cows, standing on the edge, looking down at her as she's clinging to a thorn bush for dear life.

So here she is, trying not to fall, its getting dark now and this bunch of cows are just looking at her and not moving. So she starts to climb sideways, trying to get to the other side of the gulch to get around the cows. By the time she gets there, its pitch black, no moon, in the middle of the jungley gulch. But at least the cows have gone away. She starts to pick her way through the vines and trees, but can't really see anything, so its slow going. Then she feels a hand, or something like a hand, press down very firmly on her forehead and push her to the ground. And it keeps her right there. She's sure it's a spirit and equally sure that she's pretty stuck. She can't see, she can't move, and her kids are home alone, expecting her back by now. She starts to panic, begins crying and commences to say every prayer she can remember while very slowly crawling forward with this spirit pushing her back. After a long while of crawling, crying and praying, she gets to a clearing and suddenly she can stand up again. Hallelujah! At this point she runs home, as fast as she can. When she's about 1000 feet from her house, she hears screaming. Her heart drops. It's her children crying and yelling and she runs even faster to get back to the house. The little girls are in hysterics, the kind of crying where they can't really even talk they're so upset, but they seem to be okay. After calling a friend to come over and help calm all of them down, the girls are breathing enough to tell their story: when night fell, the house started shaking, something was scratching at the windows and trying to get in the door and wooden owl on the mantel was spinning around of its own accord. They didn't know what to do and this went on until Noeau walked in the door.

A while later, Noeau tells her kumu la'au (master and teacher) Papa Henry the story to see what he has to say about the matter. He listens patiently and then asks her where the moon was when she took this little walk of hers. She tells him it was a new moon and he looks at her like, "Duh, what were you thinking?" Apparently every good Hawaiian knows that you can't go wandering around by yourself in wild places on a new moon. Mischievous spirits will mess with you if you're dumb enough to do something like that.

Since I was so enthralled, they proceeded to tell me lots of other bone-chilling tales. Piikalama was born and raised on Kauai, the oldest of the islands and tourist development came later there. He grew up in a little gulch on the north shore where the only two houses were his and his grandmother's. There wasn't electricity there until 1983. He started to tell me about his grandfather who was a famous kahuna, which is something like a sorcerer or witch doctor. The source of this man's power was a set of magical stones. There is a famous story about this man and a Baptist missionary who came to the island in the 1930's. Having heard about the powerful kahuna, the missionary went over there to see if he couldn't preach the gospel and convert the man to the saving graces of Jesus Christ. The kahuna listened patiently and then took put his sacred stones on the table. He told the missionary, "If you're god can do this, I'll gladly change religions." The rocks proceeded to dance across the table. The missionary left, completely stunned.

This was not the best story about the kahuna, though. As usual, the most interesting story involves a woman. Piikalama's mother was a Christian. She married Piikalama's father, the kahuna's son, and was constant thorn in the old man's side. The kahuna desperately wanted to pass on these magical stones to one of his sons, but it seems that none of them wanted to get involved. Especially not Piikalama's father, whose Christian wife was really opposed to taking in a set of pagan rocks, threatening divorce if those stones entered the house. Finally, the kahuna got so fed up with this woman interfering that he decided to put a curse on her. In Hawaii, this takes the form of a fireball that you send to the person's house. Piikalama tells me that he's personally seen these with such off-hand sincerity that I'm compelled to believe him. The catch with this whole cursing business is that if the recipient of the bad ju-ju is spiritually stronger than you, that fireball comes right back to your house and is doubly strong. I suppose this keeps folks from cursing each other left and right, maintaining some semblance of peace. But not today. So here comes the fireball. Piikalama's mother sees it coming across the gulch from the old man's house to hers. The whole building starts shaking and thousands of eyes are peering in the windows, evil spirits trying to get in. She falls down on her knees and starts praying to Jesus. All the sudden these two angels appear by her side. They are blond-haired, blue-eyed and wearing business suits. This is the 1950's and these angels are the epitome of the Western stereotype. Piikalama tells me that at this point, there wasn't a white person who lived anywhere on the island and he thought it was strange that the angels took this form. (I think its a pretty bold metaphor for how this woman chose the new Western ways over the old island ways, but we won't do a literary criticism of the story right now.) So she's praying and these angels show up and suddenly she the house stops shaking and she sees that fireball go zipping back across the gulch. Piikalama's grandfather becomes deathly ill and is hospitalized, on the brink of death. He asks forgiveness from Piikalama's mother, who graciously grants it, and his health is restored. I think that was his last curse. When he died the stones disappeared and so did the kahuna magic in that part of Kauai.

I was enthralled with these stories and felt some spine-tingling magic for a good hour while these two were swapping ghost tales over dinner. I'm not here to make you believe in spirits or kahuna curses, but it was the most entertaining dinner conversation I've had in a good long while.

Pig Daddy

Two months ago, I used to start out my workday by making a cup of tea, chatting with my co-workers and sorting through a mountain of emails. Times have changed. I began my gardening detail yesterday by walking up to the shade house and having the bloody jaw of a wild boar greet me at the entrance.



This is where I introduce you to my delightful colleague, Pig Daddy. He's a native Hawaiian, born and raised on the Big Island, and he loves him some pig. In case you weren't aware, Hawaii has all sorts of previously domesticated animals who have gotten loose and now roam in wild herds. There's cows, dogs, cats, chickens, horses, even donkeys that freely run around the wide open spaces. The most destructive are pigs. They tear up orchards, ruin gardens and wreak havoc on landscaping of any sort by rooting around with their big tusks. They're a real nuisance in these parts. My fellow WWOOFers were constantly fighting the pigs in Puna, continually building better fences to keep them out of the gardens. We don't have that problem here because we have our own resident pigger on the property. I'm not exaggerating when I say that Pig Daddy knows whereabouts of every wild boar in a 10 mile radius. He sets traps for them all over the property, making sure they stay the hell away from the lodge, and keeping tabs on when they'll be big enough to eat.

Apparently, the pig that ended up on my work table yesterday had met the weight criteria for eating. So here I am, looking at this bloody jaw, wondering how the hell it got here and eventually Pig Daddy came around and proceeded to tell me, in relatively incomprehensible pidgin, the story of the pig's demise. (I find that I understand about half of what he says. The other 50% I can fill in with hand gestures and enough ribbing to make him repeat himself.) It was a "big fella" walking across the road, there was a chase on foot, one shot, and now we all get sausage next week. As he said "my morning start out wit a bang!" Word. So did mine. When he saw that I took a picture of the jaw, he immediately insisted that it would make a much better photo-op if we were to unite said jaw with the rest of the pig.

So I followed the proud hunter over to his kill. All that was left was the head and hide, crammed into a 10 gallon bucket. Somehow I wasn't grossed out and obligingly took a picture with the reunited body parts. He gently pushed up the pigs ears so that it looked more expressive. Or maybe so it looked cuter, I can't tell. The only thing I really noticed was how the hairy, prickly hide of the animal so nicely mirrored the hairy exposed shoulders of the man holding his prize. I just kept thinking, "It's only 8:30, and already this guy has killed and dressed a wild boar. The Marines have got nothing on Pig Daddy."

Self Regard

I've had a lot of time to ponder these days. Sometimes that feels like a blessing and sometimes it makes my brain want to gnaw its way out of my skull from too much overprocessing. One thing I keep thinking about is this little phrase that does sommersaults in my mind and keeps me guessing.

Self-regard
Regarding the self

We all know of self-regard as it means something like self-esteem or positive self-image. I wonder these days how much that comes down to just looking at yourself. Looking in the same way that you would look at the rain coming down, or the road that you're traveling. Just looking for the sake of looking. Not looking to have an opinion or to find something. I wonder if this is the beginning of good self-regard. Just to look without judgment and be able to say "Yup, that's me." Whether its your short temper or your beautiful voice. Either one, just to look and know and stop with all the criticism and praise.

When
No one is looking
I swallow deserts and clouds
And chew on mountains knowing
They are sweet
Bones!
When no one is looking and I want
To kiss
God
I just life my own hand
To
My
Mouth

HAFIZ

Oh, Hafiz

This
Sky where we live
Is no place to lose your wings
So love, love
Love.

Cassandra the Traveling Velociraptor

Me and Cassandra go back a couple years to a friend's birthday bash in San Francisco. She was originally just a party favor, tossed into the drink I was having that evening for a laugh (the dinosaur, not the friend). By the end of the night she had a name, a back story and a very special purpose. She is named for the prophetess from the Iliad, Cassandra, high-priestess of doom. In Homer's tale, Cassandra foretells the falling of Troy, but alas, no one believes her. Of course she loses her marbles when the city is sacked. Isn't it always a recipe for madness when we're speaking God's honest truth and no one will listen? So Cassandra, seer that she is, became the obvious choice for a traveling companion. Who better to tell you when you're about to get into trouble than a three inch plastic dinosaur? What could possibly be more useful on an adventure?

In a inexplicable twist of logic, she became the good luck charm and has gone with me on all important journeys since that party three years ago. Cassandra is now my only constant companion on my six month journey. While I wasn't traveling, she sat on my desk at work, beckoning me to get moving again. So now she has her wish...another grand adventure. It sure is a good thing she fits into my pocket so easily...the party favors that night could have been those obnoxious giant teddy bears that you win at the fair.

My first night in Hawaii, I put Cassandra on my dresser to get acquainted with the new digs. She instantly made a new best friend. A little iridescent blue and green bug was completely enamored of her. He just hung out, worshiping at the feet of her orangeness, long enough for me to take a gazillion pictures. When I switched rooms last week, he followed her. I like to think that the bug has a giantess fetish and that she is the answer to all is buggy dreams. We'll never know, but he sure does flip his long antennae around in a very courtly manner. I think if he had a little bow tie and the world's smallest bouquet of flowers, he'd bring them along when he comes to call. Cassandra appears, as yet, to be unmoved by his advances, but I think she'll eventually succumb. She's a persistent gal herself, so I think his ardor will win her over in the end. I'll be sure to keep all of you salivating masses of blog-devotees appraised of the romance.

My New Hood

So this WFOOFing thing is turning out to be a really prime deal. I am staying with a family on the north shore of the Big Island in Hawaii. They have a sustainable retreat with a big main lodge, some beautiful yurts and a spa area (currently under construction). The owners have been building the property from the ground up with their own hands for the past 8 years and it is truly amazing to see the fruits of their labors. They just opened a few months ago and I was their very first WWOOFer! You can check out the resort at here. There's a lot of love that's gone into creating this space and you feel it the moment you step onto the grounds.

I'm there to help put in a sustainable garden to feed everyone at the lodge. It's a small garden with about 12 raised beds, but soon enough there will be fresh vegetables and herbs for a retreat center full of guests. Down in the gulch next to the retreat, it's pretty jungley and there are lots of fruit trees with everything from ice cream bananas to passion fruit.

North Kohala is a rural area of the coast with two small towns, Kapa'au and Hawi. Both are towns in the are "blink and you'll miss it" sense of the word. Seems like there's about 10 stores in each one and maybe about 1500 residents between the two of them. It took me a couple days to realize that they were actually different towns with different names. A little Kohala history: North Kohala is the birthplace of the late, great Hawaiian king, Kemehameha I who united all the island under one rule shortly after Captain Cook discovered them in the late 19th century. There's a big statue of him in Kapa'au that gets decorated with leis and every year on King Kemehameha Day in June. Kohala used to be booming with the sugar industry (i.e. plantations, immigrant labor and cheap wages) up until the 1980's. Then the bottom fell out of the market here and now its mostly cute little shops for tourists. This means of lots of art galleries and restaurants. Ain't it quaint?

About five miles down the road from Hawi is the house I'm staying at with my host family. Its down a quiet lane with lots of cows and grass and mesquite trees.

It's a short walk down to the water and an awesome stretch of coastline. I just walked down tonight to see the sunset and check out the tide pools. Big black lava rocks and beautiful snorkeling water just steps from where I'm staying. Magical is probably the right word for it.

Farmer's Market Bonanza

The first thing that I wanted to do with my time off on the weekend was check out the farmer's markets. I'd been reading all about the local fruits and vegetables, most of which I'd never heard of before, and was really amped to try some new foods. The family I'm staying with lives on the north shore of the island in the Kohala district and the biggest farmer's markets in the area are in Waimea and Kona. Waimea, being awesome, has not just one, but TWO markets on Saturday morning, so right after coffee I headed over there with the other two WWOOFers staying at the house.

The first one we hit was pretty small, and kind of disappointing. Not much in the way of new produce, but it did have a little breakfast booth with Korean-style omelets, crunchy asian cookies and lots of flavors of kim-chee. I'll take any excuse to have bbq pork and pickled cabbage for my morning meal. The second market was at Parker School and they had more folks with prepared foods and some beautiful vegetables. And a little old man singing ukele songs in falsetto, which was totally darling. I was really impressed with the Sandwich Isle Bread Company stand. There was beautiful fresh bread coming out of a portable wood-burning oven sitting there in the sunshine. This guy (Kevin Cabrera) is something of a local legend, and folks line up early to claim the first loaves out of the oven. He gets his oven up to 600 degrees and can churn out a loaf of bread in minutes. I tried a few varieties, including his famous 20 seed bread, and it was heavenly and totally worth the hype. There was another vendor giving out samples of red veal sausage, a local specialty that comes from calves who have just started grazing on the pasture but have been weaned. Their diet and development gives the meat a distinct red color even when cooked. If you don't mind eating baby cows, it's totally tasty.

So Waimea had some cool artisanal stuff, but I was really wanting to just get down and dirty with exotic produce. We headed down to Kona and came upon a market on Alii Street (the main tourist drag) that was exactly the opposite of the markets in Waimea. It was clearly for tourists, not locals. There were crappy trinkets, shell necklaces and tee shirts with island motifs everywhere. And lots and lots of tropical fruits. Jackpot! It reminded me of the open air markets in the Bahamas and Jamaica with all their touristy junk and beads and smells, which I loved going to as a kid. It was busy with tourists milling around so I got to oggle the food as long as I liked and found tons of varieties of mangoes, papayas, bananas and checked out some new fruits I'd never seen before. I also apparently have a mango fairy godmother. Some random fellow plopped four bright and juicy mangoes in my hands as I was leaving with my dragon fruit. I'm a little afraid to eat them, fragrant as they are. Is it possible to put a crazy Hawaiian vodoo spell on a piece of fruit? I'm having delusions reminiscent of the evil witch in Snow White with her poison apple.

I was especially compelled by the dragon fruit, which just looks so damn exotic. It comes in both the yellow and fuschia varieties, with these amazing wings that spike off the outside of the vibrant skin. Opening them up is no disappointment either. They have firm bright pink flesh and little poppy-seed sized crunchy seeds. The flavor is a little disappointing, though. Mine was vaguely sweet but otherwise pretty bland. I did manage to get the red juice all over my hands and stain my fingers and lips sort of a violet color. I was really suprised at how much it reminded me of a perfectly cooked beet...

Me and my new WFOOFing buddies plopped down at a touristy place near the water and rewarded our morning labors with cheap happy hour cocktails while cooling our feet in the sand and looking at the sailboats in the bay.

How's Hawaii?

I've been getting this question a lot since I got here last week so I'll sum it up in a couple sentences. There are rainbows every day, it's that bloody magical. I wouldn't be surprised to see unicorns and mermaids every time I walk down to the water. As I mentioned on Facebook, I can't believe that gaggle of gay people haven't yet mobbed the place singing Judy garland tunes and claiming it as their ancestral homeland. And I can see Maui from the pool at my new house. Nuf said.

Cherries & Berries & Pie, Oh My!

If you come to Seattle's Pike Street Market, you must eat two things: 1) the clam chowder at the little stand in the picture and 2) the fresh doughnuts near the newsstand. The Market Grill is really tiny but they have clam chowder the way you always wished that it would be. Not gelatinous, fishy and flavorless. Not served in some crappy sourdough bread bowl to distract you from the fact that the clams still taste a little tinny. It's creamy, colorful and smooth, full of fresh herbs and perfect little potato cubes. I look forward to coming to here whenever I can make it to Seattle. It is also imperative that I go by the doughnut cart. It's run by some smelly, tattooed hipsters but you can ignore this because they have mastered the art of doughnut making. Perfect, sweet batter and the doughnuts are always hot, fresh and crispy. They give them to you by the dozen in a greasy paper bag and I always wish that I'd gotten more. In a perfect world I would have my own cart so that I could have these babies every morning for breakfast. I'm gonna keep that dream alive as long as I can (or as long as my cholesterol holds out).


And of course the most amazing seafood is here too. We chowed down on some grilled oysters and clams from Pike Street later that night. They are so pretty!

One of the things that Pike Street is famous for is that the workers throw the fish around the market. You may have heard of this. It's a gimmicky thing for tourists, but it's actually kind of cool so watch some strapping young man fling a 30 lbs fish over the heads of a gawking crowd. There has been a big controversy lately about the practice, and PETA is trying to shut it down. Their argument is that throwing around the carcass of an animal is disrespectful. Seriously? What about eating said animal? This seems a little ridiculous considering that said fish is soon going to be filleted, grilled and eaten, which registers a little higher up on my disrespect scale. It's already dead...I can't imagine that the fish minds at this point. So they did something even more ridiculous to protest the offensive practice. They all dressed up as fish and laid on the sidewalk half-naked. I kind of wonder if maybe they all just had some Burning Man costumes lying around that they were desperate to use again, so they hatched an elaborate scheme about the fish-throwing. At least that's what I would have done if I had a mermaid tail in my closet.

While I was wandering around the market with my folks, going to all my favorite vendors, we came upon another reason that I like this town so much: there in the middle of the thoroughfare was a pie eating contest, complete with adorable kids and adoring parents snapping photos. My cute-meter broke as I was watching it, that's how damn darling it was. This part of the country is so unashamedly podunk, even in the cities. I was just in Portland and had flashbacks to my Mid-Western childhood, with all its polite citizens and American Legion posts.

And there's nothing more Americana than cherry trees, with that George Washington story and all. I spend two lovely afternoons picking cherries in my dad's back yard and two even better morning eating cherry pie and drinking coffee. God bless the USA.