travel
Farmer’s Market Haul #1
posted by Lisa
The Sunshine Market in Koloa Town is not your average farmer’s market. For one thing, wild banana trees:
and Jackfruit trees:
line the parking lot, which is along a large playing field.
For another, it begins at 12 noon, sharp. One of the farmers greets the customers, who wait at the end of a long driveway at the entrance to the market. You must, absolutely be there early and be at the front of the small crowd of locals and tourists. The host allows those who need extra time to walk, those with disabilities, the older customers, those with small children, to walk into the market first. Then, he leads the rest of the group into the market, and when everyone is there together, he blows a conch shell, and the buying begins. Sometimes, there are only a few bags of greens in the whole market, which is the reason for arriving promptly and getting to the farmers who may or may not have that lettuce or spinach.
The market is a great place, with an abundance of fruit familiar and exotic. It makes it very easy for us to eat in the same sort of way we do at home, but with very different ingredients, and some of the same ingredients that just taste different because they’re grown here. Ella and Finn both know how a market works and why we go, and that most things there are good, so it’s sort of an adventure.
The Koloa market is not fancy. They’re aren’t any crafts, or touristy things, just local farmers selling out of their trucks and off a few folding tables. Everything is bagged and/or marked in masking tape. Lots of Hawaiian farmers, a few white locals, many elderly, some middle-aged. Some will tell you their things are pesticide free, or organic. Mostly I don’t ask. I’ve been to other markets where you can see the stickers still on the fruit, or the commercial packing boxes in the back of the van, but this one seems to be mostly local people selling things that they grow. Sometimes, they seem to be selling things that just happen to grow abundantly in their back yard.
Finn got a couple of free bananas.
Ella got a beautiful $5 lei, an ice cold coconut, and a free gardenia for her hair.
We got a couple of not-very-nice-looking but incredibly sweet and mild, low-acid pineapples:
My beloved, fiddlehead ferns, which I look forward to every year, and which are a little like an island version of asparagus. I know they can be gotten elsewhere, but elsewhere, they woudn’t taste like they had just been hauled out of rich red dirt.
I got a bag of mountain apples, which are mild and sweet, and sort of suprising. Ella and I have come to like them. Kory thinks they’d be really good if you were in the mountains. And had nothing else to eat.
Flowers, for a third of what I’d pay for them in California:
I grabbed some great greens, but passed on an amazing squash, curled on the asphalt underneath a table, looking nearly alive.
The radishes really are as big as they look, and the tomatoes, cucumbers, mangos–all the familiar things taste like slightly askew versions of themselves. But of course, askew is the wrong word, because they taste exactly like they were grown here. Themselves, but different.
Next week, I am going to try a banana bloom, which is as large as my son’s head, and which, apparently, you can stir-fry. I knew bananas grew on trees, I suppose, but I didn’t know how and I certainly didn’t know about the blooms, which are simply gorgeous.
We like bananas, coconuts, and …
posted by Lisa
My daughter Ella admits that apple bananas look awful, but taste really, really good. They’re best when they have a good number of brown spots, and they’re about half the size of commercial bananas we get on the mainland, and they taste just like, well, a banana should taste.
After nap today, I was looking for a snack, and cut open our first strawberry papaya. The kids had never seen one, and I’m not a particular fan, but we try things.
It looks otherworldly, bright orange, fleshy, fertile, The aroma is really earthy. Both kids and Kory used other words to describe it.
Even after scooping out the seeds, slicing out the flesh like a melon, it was not a hit. So I tried the passion fruit, which you can see for yourself is even more alien-looking to people who have not grown up eating tropical fruit.
You scoop out the seeds with a spoon, which are sweet and tart and bright tasting. It’s really good, but after the papaya, Ella and Finn weren’t trusting me so much.
I hate to waste food, especially from a farmer. So, I made smoothies. Which were a big hit.
Baby steps.
Kauai Dinner #1
posted by Lisa
When we’re here, we like to get to the beach early–often before 8 am–although we don’t have much choice as the kids are up by 6 am, and sometimes before depending on the din of the roosters. I like it that early, because the beach is empty and pacific, and this year, the tide has been low, so we hunt for hermit crabs and snowflake moray eels and fish and sea snails and sea cucumbers. It’s always different…
But this means we’re home for naps by 1 pm, and we return to the beach in late afternoon until 5 or 5:30. By the time we get home we’re all hungry, and I have no tolerance for fancy or involved. So on Day 2:
I started the rice cooker, chopped up the fiddlehead ferns and threw them in a foil packet with a little olive oil and red sea salt.
After showers, Kory took the ahi out to the grill, which had been marinating in Huli Huli sauce, which is diluted soy sauce, sugar, ginger and is good on just about anything.
While he grilled outside with the kids, I sliced the cucumber, tomatoes, and avocado from the Sunshine market.
I threw some (organic, prewashed) microgreens in the salad bowl, and set the table on the lanai.
I poured a little Huli Huli sauce in a bowl, added a small amount of ginger & fresh scallion (also from the Sunshine market) and had instant dipping sauce.
Fiddleheads were steamed in foil on the grill with snap peas:
Yes, we had a lot of food.
Dinner was done in the time it took the fish to grill. I couldn’t get a picture of the tuna on the table. As soon as it was set down, before I even sat down, it was on the kid’s plates.
We’re working on the manners.
But, after dinner, Finn accompanied Ella while she painted the sunset. Kory & I finished the wine.
Feeding Finn
posted by Lisa
Finn is my picky eater. As an infant, he ate everything, then one day, he refused everything green. And orange and red. For a year, he ate mostly rice and vitamins and fruit. I did what the books tell you to do–I offered him the same food we were eating, in the hopes that he would slowly reincorporate those foods into his diet.
It mostly worked, but he still had the habit of taking one look at something new and proclaiming: “NOT I like that,” and zipping his mouth shut.
Then:
Day 1 in Kauai, Finn and his sister spent hours in the ocean: swimming, snorkeling, trying to surf on their boogie boards, digging in the sand, collecting hermit crabs, feeding any number of tropical fish that swim around them. They’re easily engaged, generally speaking, but they’re in their glory when water and sand come together.
Dinner, Night One in Kauai: I set down in front of Finn a plate of ono, which is sweet, white fleshed fish and which lives up to its name in every way, and a small amount of seaweed salad.
The seaweed–ogo, I think, or ogi–was blanched fresh by our local market, and to it I added a few drops sesame oil, some soy sauce, and rice wine vinegar, and red salt. My husband and I love ocean salad, and this one was decent, but nowhere near as good as what we get at our local Japanese restaurant. This was fresh as the ocean, and slightly crunchy. Finn & his sister regularly eat nori strips, but that dried seaweed is more like a crunchy seasoned snack; it doesn’t look like a plant, and it doesn’t feel like a plant in your mouth. Especially not a plant with a whole lot of feathery tentacles in your mouth, which is what I put in front of him.
I told Finn, “This seaweed came from the ocean you were swimming in today.”
His eyes opened wide, he gave a little gasp of astonishment, then he actually popped the seaweed in his mouth. Then, as we watched, he gave it a thumbs up. “I LOVE it,” he exclaimed.
