Marketless Monday

Today I am going to just eat off the land.  We eat lots every day that we pick but always mix in some store-bought goodies like eggs, salmon, crackers, garlic, chia seeds, and chocolate.  So it's a little push to be just eating what's here, especially on the protein front, as our chickens haven't started laying yet (although I plan to check soon... any day... could be today!).  (Nick suggested he could plant an egg in their roost but that would absolutely be cheating.)  Some of the greens are high protein though, the chaya and  katuk, and the Okinawa spinach is very high in good stuff.  Found this link while looking to see if the spinach has protein: http://www.agroforestry.net/pubs/Can_I_Grow_a_Complete_Diet.pdf
We have most of those foods growing, just not nuts, but do have peanuts, which I am boiling right now.

Here's my diet as the day goes:

Smoothie:  frozen apple bananas, 2 types of lilikoi, blueberries, poha; fresh turmeric, cane syrup and lemon (this was more like a slurpie with all the frozen ingredients, and was really delicious).

Snack: avocado with lemon

Lunch: Fantastic salad!  Started off thinking I was making a green papaya salad but added so many different things it became something else.  To the grated green and also ripe papaya I added grated daikon radish, arugula, basil, katuk, avocado, peanuts, garlic chives, scallion, mint, mild green pepper, dried hot red pepper,  and squeeze of lemon.  The peanuts did have salt from salting the water while boiling them.  Also although I didn't add any purchased oil or vinegar, I did soak the greens in apple cider vinegar as the going precaution against rat lung disease, not officially sanctioned but the theory is it loosens slug slime and then you rinse it off (so appetizing!).

Snack: 2 apple-bananas and some peanuts (after swimming in waterfall pool)

More peanuts and avocado at 6:30 waiting for taro to cook... I should have started it earlier, was very hungry by 7:30.
Dinner:  Steamed yard long beans and a few bush beans, a few carrots, and Okinawa spinach with lemon, salt and cane syrup; boiled and mashed taro with coconut oil (cheat), salt (cheat), and cane syrup - this last was very satisfying.

:)

Harvesting

August 27 - A beautiful day.
What made it beautiful -
Working with everyone in the garden this morning, and getting a lot done in small groups. The community garden had been neglected while Dan and I were "vacationing" back on the mainland for 3 weeks - the gang here sheepishly admitted they found that while we were gone it felt like "ooh hey the folks are gone let's goof off!" Although the 10 people currently here are from 20-55 years old, and only two of them are our children, there still was this effect - and I should add that some of them did work in the garden, just not the concerted effort needed around here to keep the aggressive wainaku grass from taking over. So, the fact that today we had 8 folks in the garden today working for at least 2 hours each was huge and made me very happy.

We harvested Okinawan (purple) sweet potatoes, which are very very dark purple and hugely high in antioxidants, as well as delicious!

Then later in the day I helped Sophie in her garden. She rescued me from the sun (I had returned to the community garden and was rapidly wilting) to work on the shady side of their house where we had planted peanuts a few months ago. They were ready to harvest, and we collected around two pounds, and they were so easy to grow with no pest damage!! Very exciting.

Dan and Nick and Dave were working on a new water line to Dave's house, so since the water was turned off for awhile I took a dip in the stream to wash the mud and grubbiness off. Was late in the day, lightly cloudy but still warm; went down through the plantains and sugar cane Jason got started before he left - this area is a very pleasing polyculture now, with blue corn (already growing from our own seed), sweet potato, spinach, avocado and cassava growing under the plantains. Scrambled down the bank and splashed and soaked. The sun came out and sparkled in my eyes as I tried to practice the art of "Hakalau," a Hawaiian meditation we just learned about, where (my lazy western interpretation) you look at a plant, soften your gaze, awaken your peripheral vision and listen to what your innate wisdom and animal knowledge of the environment may tell you. This is a particularly special meditation since the watershed we live in is also Hakalau; it's the name of the river that our stream runs into that forms a breathtaking gulch.

The stream is an essential element to life here- exciting, relaxing, rejuvenating. And providing relief from the heat. I have to correct my earlier statement that all the seasons seem the same. Summer is definitely hotter! Dave, Nick and Dan work so hard building the house, I can't believe it; I get zapped from an hour or so of weed-pulling and digging in the sun and have to take a break, but they are out there all day. At least they get to do this:

They cleared a path and attached a rope to climb up the right side of the waterfall so they could jump. That's Simba, Dave and Nick on the cliff, Dan floating. Ok so even this activity was work but they did have a lot of fun jumping into the pond! More harvesting - also today I boiled some pohas to finish with cane syrup as jam tomorrow. Pohas grow a lot like tomatillos, and have the same little tent around them that protects them from bugs and dirt. You pick them or collect fallen fruits when this tent is yellow or brown and inside the poha is orange and the size of a large marble. This batch made a delicious pie that, with added fresh bananas, we agreed tasted incredibly like peach pie!

What else was today... oh, another highlight was talking with Sophie, she said her little house is the favorite place she has ever lived, and she wishes she could take it with her wherever she goes. Reason she likes it so much is it is finished with all the details to her specifications, and it's all one room, which is something I like a lot about our little house, too. However, a bedroom for changing will be nice, I kind of get stuck when people come over and there's no place to swap my shirt. So I do very much look forward to our new house, which is growing nicely now - by the time I send this, we will have a floor! (Update - and all the walls, and two decks!) It will have one main room and then a bedroom, bathroom, and little office. Laundry will be outside on a screened lanai, as well as a second bathroom and garden food prep area.

Two more food updates - we have also been harvesting bushels of lilikoi, both the regular kind and Jamaican, to make jam, popsicles, and of course smoothies.

Second, the blue corn has dried pretty nicely and we were able to grind it and make some experimental tortillas... very crumbly (probably from the coconut flour) but... edible!





Sept. 12 - This is what happens, I start writing one day and then before I can make it ready to go so much happens that it feels all incomplete and inaccurate... so here are a few house pictures, there's Nick on the new floor - you can see behind him the deck in progress; the last photo is Dave walking out on a wall to work on the deck. The deck was tricky to build but they did it and it will be a wonderful place to catch a breeze.

Aloha til next time! Rachel