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"Cooking" for Me, Myself and I

When I am organized and have a refrigerator stocked with local fruits and veggies (70% of the time and getting better), this is how I assemble my breakfast/lunch. I take some local, organic lettuce greens, 2 oranges, 2 frozen bananas and a quarter-sized piece of ginger. I add some acai concentrate, Hawaiian Spirulina and Agave syrup or local honey.

 

I turn my Vita-Mix to the "variable" speed and slowly increase it to high and within less than a minute, I've taken the colorful blend to a single shade of "furple".

  You won't taste the lettuce or spirulina because of the sweetness of the fruits. This whole concoction sustains me through the day, it varies slightly with the fruits that I'm given or find at the local supermarket.  All of the fiber and goodness remains in the smoothie. It's no wonder that I'm in love with my Vita-Mix, a blender with 4 wheel drive!

Nothing Says Lovin' Like Something from the Oven

We talk a lot about babies in the Prenatal Yoga class on Friday mornings. I can share my experience of being pregnant, having a natural birth, and having a boy. It gives me some of the qualifications to teach the class even though my birthing experiences are almost 28 years old. My son Brede (bray-dee) will be 28 this year and married for three of those years to Natalie.

They took me out for a Valentine's Day dinner, along with my nephew Kai's shadow  (a school project and subject of another post or two). It's when they come over for dinner that I'll crank up the stove and oven, drag out the big pots and pans and even bake a pie! This Sunday I fed them beef stew and rice, a green salad (I have a lot of greens in my reefer) and a peach pie.

I think we all eat lighter during the week, but something chemical happens when you gather with kinfolk. Your taste buds emit cholesterol melting enzymes and all the rules are suspended for 24 hours.

There you go, cut the Kona Yoga logo in there and it turns all that sugar and spice into a one Om Pie. You can take me out of the kitchen but I'm still a boy-pleasing-mom who's too short to get a decent photo.

By the way, does anyone know the entire jingle that contains my post title? I'm sure it's from the days of black and white TV...Gunsmoke, Lassie. Show us your maturity.

3/11/08. Kathleen Cornell provided the correct ending to the jingle: "Nothing says lovin' like something from the oven, AND PILLSBURY SAYS IT BEST!"

A New Green on the Block

Here's another reason to seek out local foods. If you frequent the weekly farmers' markets, your patronage and support will encourage them to offer new and varied products. When they do, you'll have a chance to try foods that you may have never seen before, much less tasted.

I grew up with my Aunty Thelma's daikon-ba, pickled daikon shoots, on hot rice with a sprinkling of soy sauce. Sometimes with hot green tea added for what's known as chazuke.

My aunt grew vegetables in a designated "patch", along side her driveway and around her grey, two-story house.  Wherever she deemed the soil rich enough and the sunlight sufficient for her eggplants, string beans, daikon, etc., she planted an edible landscape and served up some of the most delicious food offerings this side of heaven!

So now, when someone offers me a sealed, plastic bag full of green stuff that I am not familiar with, my taste buds grapple. Is this something we like? Can we associate it with something good that we've had in the past? The curly leaf mustard greens on sale at Manuka Farms' booth today, fit the bill.  It was crispy and slightly bitter, like the raw onion slices that I love in my salads and because I knew that it was grown in Big Island soil, I thought of Thelma as I chewed and salivated.

Mustard Greens: Nutritional Facts

Photo: CookThink

Green Flash Coffee

  Nearly a week into my Year of Living Delightfully, I'm finding it easy to fit the Mother Sequence into my day (I'm usually dressed for the occasion- all day) but eating raw has been challenging.  If I want a variety of fresh fruits and veggies available for me, I have to go grocery shopping more than just once a week OR come up with a better plan. There are days though, when I leave the studio after teaching a yoga class or giving a couple of massages that the thought of walking into a cold supermarket sends chills up and down my entire vertebral column.

But there's an oasis between the studio and home for me and it's called Green Flash Coffee. They make the best real fruit smoothies! Located in front of the Sea Village Condos on the makai side of Alii Drive, they offer a variety of coffees and teas, panini sandwiches, and ice cream as well as the smoothies. My favorite is the Green Flash Smoothie with spinach, fruits and some protein powder! It's just what I need to hold me over until I can get up enough motivation to go grocery shopping.

This is supposed to all be fun and delightful, right? So I searched through my memory cards and remembered a time when drawing up weekly menus, shopping and cooking (believe it or not) were fun for me. I owned a couple of cookbooks by Pierre Franey and just about every meal I made was great! Leftovers even found there way into my son's pre-school lunch box. He detested peanut butter and jelly sandwiches but loved rigatoni with shrimp cooked in a fresh tomato/basil sauce, sprinkled with feta cheese and capers!

Those were my pre-yoga days, before cholesterol was "invented" so there was a lot of meat, and butter, and eggs, etc., and it was good. My taste buds have now matured, along with the rest of my body, so I am in search of a new cuisine and a 2008 Pierre Franey model. In the meantime, I'll often be found at 75-6000 Alii Drive, picking up my smoothie brunch at Green Flash Coffee.

Let's Eat Local

Food is the most primitive form of comfort.
-Sheila Graham

I joined the Eat Local Challenge (ELC) a month ago, inspired by the Keauhou Farmers' Market and my dear friend, Nora Bow. It was a month of education for me because I made the commitment to record my consumption of local foods and, as we all know, thirty days hath September!

I certainly fit in with the population of humans who reportedly eat from a preferred list of ten or fewer foods. It would have been opportune for me to try different fruits (but I love mangoes!) and food products for a wider variety and a more interesting read. I did, however, learn a few things, made some new connections and have some ideas for future challenges.

This is what I learned:

Your local supermarket may be a better source than the health food store, at least for fresh and local produce. I found that out within the first week.

The proper placement of the apostrophe S for the possessive noun farmers is after the S, as in Farmers' Market, not Farmer's or absent as in Farmers. I'm usually picky about such things but chose to ignore it until I began reading Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle - A Year of Food Life. I respect her writing expertise so much more than any government entity. Mangoes may make you lazy and I'm correcting my previous posts as I find them.

It's far more healthy to feel good when eating your food than worrying about eating good food. You can take down two mangoes off a tree with one stone, if the Eat Local concept truly appeals to you and you don't obsess over it. Click here, for Food: The Science of Scrumptious. The article explains how we all have our food quirks and may even pass them on to our kids.

Pre-planned meals avoid the need for prepared meals. You'd think I would have learned this after all the years of late afternoon competitive grocery shopping.

My Eat Local focus has given me a greater appreciation of the Big Island and all that is grown here. I'm also gaining a new respect for the foodies of the world! Their enthusiasm and true joy of eating will change the way America eats, which Europeans will say is with too much worry and guilt.

Here are some links to a few happy foodies I've made contact with this past month:

Bettina and Suzanne are the high-energy writers of Loulies...for the love of food. Bettina found us through the ELC website and introduced herself.

You'll want to keep an eye on a new Hawaii publication: Hawaiian Edibles. Gloria Cohen, the publisher and editor-in-chief, promises an interesting second issue.

Kale for Sale is written by an eco-conscious foodie named Katrina and she mentioned Kona Yoga in her September 27 post along with a list of other blog sites.

I am inspired to continue my local eating focus and to try some of the recipes shared by all of my new friends. I'm also highly intrigued by the concept of a 30 day challenge so stay tuned, this is the beginning of a brand new month!

What's considered local? Take a look at this 100-mile radius map and type in your zip code. Many Eat Local enthusiasts consider local to be within that area.

Print: TaroFestival.org

My October Challenge...

Hawaiian Edibles

I picked up a copy of Edible Hawaiian Islands' premier issue at the Keauhou Farmers Market this past Saturday. Publisher and editor, Gloria Cohen, writes: Everywhere you look, there are signs that the Hawaiian Islands are in the midst of a renaissance in sustainable eating (eating locally produced food) - and we should all be a part of it.

There's an article about Richard Ha's Hamakua Springs Country Farm that reminded me of the sauce I made using their cocktail tomatoes and a cilantro pesto from Manuka Farms (9/18 on my Eat Local food list). Ha expects to produce close to 2 million pounds of tomatoes this year in all shapes, sizes and varieties! I'd say he's doing his part in "...making our state self-sufficient."

The magazine highlights farmers as well as the commercial establishments that acquire and prepare locally grown foods. It credits the top chefs who began  Hawaii Regional Cuisine (HRC), with changing the way Hawaii eats and thus raising the demand for top quality local produce and food products. Incidentally, Kona can be proud that one of the original HRC chefs is our own Amy Ferguson, owner of O's Bistro in the Crossroads Shopping Center.

At this point, you may get a complimentary copy of Edible Hawaiian Islands at all Borders stores in Hawaii, and maybe from one of the vendors at the Keauhou Farmers Market. Look for the pineapples on the cover! As for me, I want to try the Chopped Salad recipe from Restaurant Bar Acuda (page 30).

Loulies... for the love of food

 Bettina (right) from Loulies.com, found us through the Eat Local Challenge site and has invited us to join their friends-who-love-food network. Their site is quite very impressive. There are posts that cover local foods, recipes, and tips. This was Bettina's offer:

I thought that you might be interested in our website, Loulies, which has two features: (1) "e-bites" which are sent out, on average, twice a week via email.  They are short musings on anything and everything inspired by food and always include a great recipe, must-have tip, menu idea, new ingredient discovered etc.
You must sign-up to receive the e-bites. (2) A Cook the Book club for those who want to learn to cook better with us (like a traditional book club, but we cook instead of read - this is how Suzanne and I met over 10 years ago and have learned to cook better with friends - it is really a great concept).

Such beautiful women, with the energy and creativity to match! I signed up to receive their 'e-bites' and you may want to do the same. Start a book club with your friends and let me know if you do. Especially if you live in Kona; "Have fork/spoon/chopsticks Will Travel".

Mindful Eating

Last week Saturday, Nora Bow bought this tray of wheatgrass at the Keauhou Farmers' Market for about fifteen dollars. She snips a handful at a time to juice and the grass keeps growing.

Nora just bought herself a Green Star Juicer and quickly learned all the nuances of its twin gear set-up. Here, she's showing me where to look for the extracted juice.

Like me, Nora finds wheatgrass juice a bit harsh to drink neat, so she's going to add some mango,apples, limes and starfruit. All of them grown locally except for the apples.

Once all of the wheatgrass and fruits have been juiced, what comes out of the juicer is a roll of pulp which Nora adds to her compost pile.

After downing our shots of chlorophyll, vitamins and minerals (with just a hint of 'foul grass'), Nora took me outside to see her favorite way to Eat Local: her container garden. Nora and her husband Jeff, live at The Pines in Kailua-Kona so they don't have a lot of outdoor space or soil. Container gardening solved that.

Nora's second choice for procuring local products is to trade her homegrown veggies and herbs with friends for such things as avocados, papayas and lychee. Then she ventures out to the Farmers' Markets in Keauhou and Waimea. What she isn't able to stock up through these channels, she'll get at the local health food stores.

Nora's an inspiration for all of us who aspire to eat local, eat neat, and eat organic. Her diet is comprised of about 90% raw foods yet she cooks for her husband who is not a vegan or vegetarian and she grows her own food within a limited space. Proof of the old maxim: Where there's a will, there's a way!

Eat Local

"The two biggest sellers in bookstores are the cookbooks and the diet books. The cookbooks tell you how to prepare the food and the diet books tell you how not to eat any of it."
--Andy Rooney

After I came back from my last trip, my body had a strong desire for water, fresh fruits and vegetables. Perhaps my cells were parched by the desert heat or actually in need of certain nutrients. Whatever the reason, I welcomed the change because I felt lighter and brighter.

Then during the last yoga workshop, the therapeutic applications of the Mother Sequence and other specific postures, were usually coupled with suggestions for meals. Fruit for breakfast and fruit at tea time (4-5pm). Lunch and dinner should begin with fruit or a vegetable salad before any cooked foods are consumed, the fresh foods making up a half or more of the volume of the meals. Luckily for me, my body made up my mind for me.

I've also learned that it's what you feel when you eat that is more important than what you eat so I've been looking for more ways to feel good about my food. Adding veracity to Andy Rooney's statement, I bought a couple of new cookbooks (do books on raw foods qualify as cookbooks?) and find myself out foraging every other day or two. It's become a welcome practice as I look for more sources of food.

The Keauhou Farmers Market that's held at the Keauhou Shopping Center every Saturday from 8am to 12 noon is now my Top Shop, edging past Amazon.com because of instant gratification from my purchases. The feel good factor is that I'm taking steps to Eat Local . Foods are fresher, less energy has been consumed to get the food from the farm to my table and I'm supporting the people in my own neighborhood. What a beautiful concept.

As I was hunting and gathering on the Internet, I found out that there's going to be an Eat Local Challenge held nationally during the month of September. I just love it when everything rolls out in front of me like a red carpet. I'm beginning to think that the carpet has been out there for a long time, I just had to turn a little more to the right and take a step.

Photo:restaurantswaikiki.com