Moving & Eating....Literally

I arrived in NYC last week and would love to report that I'm being a fabulous international playgirl....hitting all the hippest summer spots, eating exotic street food everyday, uncovering the fabulous underbelly of the city and bringing it to you in this blog as a witty gift.  But I'm tired and there's work to be done, so I've done none of that.  What I have been doing is helping my sister and Jess move into their lovely new apartment in Brooklyn and sending off tons of job applications.  And I've been able to fit in a little bit of cheap and fabulous food here and there.

I never thought I'd say this, but the day we went to IKEA was fabulous.  Not because IKEA is so special, but because it is in Red Hook.  This little neighborhood is right across from Governors Island in Brooklyn and formerly was an industrial and pretty underdeveloped place.  These days it's pretty hopping.  One of the highlights for me was the Red Hook Community Farm.  It sits on 2.5 acre concrete lot in the middle of an industrial/residential neighborhood.  They just put about a foot of dirt right on top of the concrete and started farming.  It really doesn't look like much, but they have a CSA program for the neighborhood, weekly farmers' markets and youth education programs.  They make quite a bit impact on their community with only two and a half acres of fenced concrete.

Another great part about the neighborhood is the fabulous street food by the ballpark.  Every kind of Central and South American food you could want awaits you here: elote, papusas, sopas, horchata....it was a dream come true after having (mostly happily) eaten bread and cheese for almost three months.

Some other quick food highlights include:

The great street food at the Brooklyn Flea.  Manchego fritters and kim chee hot dogs are a wonderful breakfast.

BLT Burger in the West Village.  Any time you can have Maker's Mark in your chocolate milk shake is a good one.

Jacques Torres wicked frozen hot chocolate.  I have one every day that I'm in NYC without fail.  Don't ask how it's possible to have something cold and hot at the same time.  Just drink it...you'll become obsessed.

The street hustlers on Kate's block who were trying to sell me a watermelon every time I walked out their front door.  I don't know how they wound up with a truckload of fruit, but clearly they weren't very successful at getting rid of it all.  A real shame.

I'm off to Ohio this afternoon for a quick visit and then back to California...sigh.

It's Quiet Here

I came back to Chateau Brandeau as my last farm for my last days in France. Elly isn't here. Neither is Phil or Eddie of Ana, my new friends since I've arrived. In fact, it's a little too quiet, and as always there is lots of time in the vines...which means lots of time for contemplation. But contemplation makes it sound serene, meditative even. Sometimes it's that, but the most honest description would be a daily a panic attack.

I came to France for a lot of reasons, but if I were going to psycho-analyze myself, I'd say the main reason was that I still felt par-baked after my return from Hawaii. Like whatever had been forming there was close to done, but not quite there. I tried to come back to California and put it all together again last winter, but nothing was quite forming up inside of me and I had to admit that it just wasn't time yet. So I came to France for another adventure, thinking that this time I'd be ready to go back when it was all over. Only now I feel even less confident than before....I'm returning with an even skimpier game plan.

I wish that I could wrap it all up in a neat and tidy arc, or end with some witty and clever thought, but I can't. All I know is that today I leave for Paris for three days and then I fly to New York. After that I have no schedule, no job, no house and no fucking clue.

Starting Again

I finally got around to having some film developed.   My sister gave me a Diana F--the type of camera that actually takes film...that you actually have to get developed.  Unlike most things these days, it's a process where there's a gap between the exposure and seeing the image you've created.  Isn't that a tempting metaphor?

I took all of my film in to be developed at once and it certainly had been accumulating.  There were five rolls of film, some of which I honestly could not remember taking.  So I get this grip of images and all I know for sure is that they were taken some time in the last year, they must have been of something I thought was important, and obviously I was present at that particular moment of light.

I just turned 29 this week.  My 28th year didn't treat me so kind, so I'm getting a little philosophical this birthday.  I'm starting to comb through the strands of my thoughts and trying to find some wisps of insight, some clues to keep 29 from repeating the mistakes of 28.  But I'm finding it just as difficult as putting a place and time to these rather abstract images.

I keep looking at these pictures and wondering where I was when I took them and what I was thinking and who I was with.  And, more importantly, what can I learn from them so that 29 is a happy year for me?

All these question seem particularly important since I am starting this year much like the last one.  Last year I began a year of journeying by coming to New York, doing a visiting tour of my family and friends, and then taking off for an indeterminate amount of time on an agricultural adventure.  So it was for year number 28 and so it shall be for number 29.  I really do not want to be just a skipping record.

The journey is experiencing some delays, however.  The plan: fly to France to stay at some farms and learn how to make goat cheese.  Last year I crossed the Pacific, this year I cross the Atlantic.  There's just one little snag: a pesky volcano in Iceland is keeping me USA-bound and I'm here in limbo, with too many strange pictures and too many questions.  As my friend Lu put it, I've got a little dust in my wings and its keeping me from taking off.  So here I sit to think and wait and, after 3 long months, take up this blog to untangle my thoughts.

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?