From Ground to Grindz — Day 1: Ready, Set, Go!

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Preparing the House

Posted Saturday Sept. 25, 1:24 p.m.

There’s a lot about Eat Local that is new, exciting, and a little scary. But there is one aspect that I’ve experienced before.

Growing up in a Jewish household, my family observed the springtime holiday of Pesach (pronounced like pay-sock), or Passover. According to lore, Jewish slaves had to leave Egypt in such a hurry that there was no time to bake their bread, and they ate it unleavened in the desert.

To this day, Jews give up leavened bread — as well as numerous other grains, for reasons beyond my understanding — for eight days each March or April. And in the days before the holiday commences, families go through their kitchens and pantries (items that don’t qualify as Kosher for Passover — “K for P”).

In theory, any unkosher food must be removed from the house, often via sale or short-term loan to a non-Jewish friend, who’ll return the goods after a week. Ridding the house of chametz is a mitzvah — a holy deed.

My family never took it to this extreme — we just made sure to eat or dispose of any unkosher perishables and keep things like uncooked pasta in the closet. Out of sight, out of mind.

I haven’t “kept Passover” for probably 15 years now, but I still have the memory of going through my home, searching for a symbol — usually a “K” or a “P” with a circle around it — that would tell me a given snack was still on the menu. Those experiences, along with a short, educational stint as a full vegan a couple of years ago, proved to be valuable lessons as my girlfriend Korina and I underwent our last pre-Eat Local grocery run Friday night and organized our fridge Saturday morning.

The list of things that will be remaining in the cupboard this week is lengthy, but the most important items are: soy sauce; our entire cornucopia of spices; granola bars for breakfast; bread for toast and sandwiches; peanut butter and Nutella; pasta; and, of course, rice.

When I told my parents and grandparents about my “strange new Hawaiian diet” that would keep bread, pasta, rice and yes, beer, out of my life for a week, we shared a knowing laugh. This is Passover, island style.

Stocking Up

Posted Sunday Sept. 26, 8 a.m.

To this point of the blog, I’ve been primarily focused on what I can’t consume during Eat Local week. But what’s on the menu?

Saturday morning, Korina and I got up early — for a weekend, anyway — and drove over to the farmers market at Kapiolani Community College. It’s actually the first time we’ve been to a farmers market since we moved to Oahu six months ago. They were a regular occurrence during our time on Kauai, but it seems we lost the connection to the aina since we took up residence in the big city. Maybe Eat Local will reestablish that link?

People are serious about local produce at the Kapiolani Community College farmers market.

This booth was one of dozens featuring local greens and fruit

None of these ended up in our canvas bags as we stayed focused on the basics.

Arriving at about 8:30 a.m., we were far too late to fight for the best orchids, but we were here for sustenance, not ornamentals. We looked, we touched, we tasted, and we spent nearly all the cash we’d brought with us. Here was our haul:

Theng’s Farm — Waimanalo, Oahu

  • 2 bags Okinawan sweet potatoes (one white, one red) — $4
  • Japanese eggplant — $2
  • String beans — $2
  • Bok Choy — $2

Pit Farmers — Mililani, Oahu

  • 1 bunch of Italian basil — 50 cents
  • Shallots — $2.50

Vilath Farm — Mililani, Oahu

  • 1 ulu (breadfruit) — $1.49 per pound
  • 1 head Napa cabbage — 99 cents per pound
  • Green jalapenos — $1

HSN Farms — Waimanalo, Oahu

  • Solo papaya — $1.29 per pound
  • Apple bananas — $1.29 per pound
  • Japanese cucumbers — $2
  • Zucchini — $2

MAO Organic Farms — Waianae, Oahu

  • Curry leaf — $1
  • “Sassy” lettuce — $4

Made In Hawaii Food

  • Longan grown in Kona — $4.99 per pound

Unidentified booth

  • 2 starfruit — $1

All in all, we spent $38.55 at the market. How long will that last us? We’ll find out.

The Last Supper

Posted Sunday Sept. 26, 10 a.m.

With a week of eating exclusively locally grown ingredients staring us in the face, Korina and I had to make the most of our Saturday night dinner.

Like many in Hawaii, we eat rice almost every day, and we made a point of making that the base of our meal. Fried rice with potatoes, peas and scallions was served with a side of kim chee and french onion soup with mozzarella cheese. Not sure that there was a “theme” to the meal, per se, except that we were using up some of our non-local perishables.

Take a look:

Our last meal before Eat Local week featured many items we’re giving up.

What have our eating habits meant for our finances? We generally cook dinner around five nights per week and try to bring leftovers to work whenever possible. We keep track of all our expenditures, and a quick review of the last couple of months of our spreadsheet shows that Korina and I together have spent, on average, about $160 per week on food. Will eating local bankrupt us?

And how healthy is our baseline lifestyle? Well, at my Sunday morning weigh-in, I tipped the scales at 218 pounds. We’ll see if eating local for a week can help me shave some pounds.

And It Begins

Posted Sunday Sept. 26, 11 a.m.

I had been on the couch watching football for about an hour when Korina came out of our bedroom looking less than excited to be awake.

“We don’t have any milk or sugar, we don’t have anything ripe to eat for breakfast,” she told me. “Day 1 is off to a rough start.”

Shoot. We’d been talking about Eat Local week for days now, so how did we let this happen?

Well, our first mistake was when we neglected to buy local milk Friday night when we were already at the grocery store. We even went to the dairy aisle to scope out our options, but didn’t pull the trigger, perhaps wanting to shop around a little bit. And now Korina was facing the possibility of black coffee, and wasn’t happy about it.

Our second mistake was focusing on green fruit at the farmers market Saturday. Over the years, we’ve had to throw away far too much food due to spoilage, so we’ve gravitated toward far-out expiration dates and not-yet-ripe fruits and veggies.

Apple bananas, papaya and starfruit might be ready in a few days, but not yet.

That strategy might mean the food lasts us through the week, but it also means we were left without Sunday breakfast options.

So for the second straight day, out we went into the early morning light.

Rather than driving to our neighborhood Foodland, we thought we’d check out Kokua Market and Down to Earth, two health food alternatives on King Street, within walking distance of our apartment.

At Kokua, a partner in Kanu Hawaii’s challenge with “Eat Local” signs prevalently displayed around local products, we found a dozen large Ka Lei white eggs, a half-gallon of Hawaii’s Fresh skim milk, and some ripe apple bananas and papayas.

Kokua Market had some local milk that went great in Korina’s coffee.

At Down to Earth, we picked up some local lentils and sprouts, organic garlic (a pleasant surprise as we didn’t see that anywhere else and were worried we’d have to do without), white mushrooms and, perhaps most importantly, macadamia nut oil to do essentially all of our cooking.

Missing from both stores — local sugar. We know Maui’s Hawaiian Commercial and Sugar Co. is the state’s last plantation, but it’s hard to believe that a crop that once supported the islands’ economy must now be shipped in from faraway places. Even the large, brown Sugar in the Raw bag was packed in Brooklyn, New York.

Asked about sugar, a friendly Kokua Market cashier told us with a smile, “You see all those highways out there? Those used to be sugar cane fields.” I guess we’ll keep looking for sugar. Loyal readers: please help!

At Down to Earth, there were plenty of options for sugar, but none of them were local.

After we returned, Korina made herself an unsweetened cup of coffee and we shared some apple bananas and papaya for breakfast. That’s a far cry from the Dim Sum that has been a Sunday morning tradition for us since we moved here from the Dim Sum-less island of Kauai. An hour later, both still hungry, we ate some hard-boiled eggs, mine with large grains of Hawaiian sea salt that I’ll have to grind down to a more manageable size when I’m less famished.

Sunday morning breakfast, Eat Local style.

Off to a rough start, but at least we’re fed. And there is something nice about feeling like you’re contributing to a noble cause.

Meal 2 in the Books

Posted Sunday Sept. 26, 2 p.m.

Breakfast was easy; we just had to cut things up and eat them. For lunch, cooking was involved.

Korina peeled and thinly sliced three of the purple Okinawan sweet potatoes we got at the farmers market on Saturday, tossed the slices in the new mac nut oil and grilled them up on the George Foreman. She sauteed the organic garlic, shallots and green beans in our wok and tossed the MAO lettuce in a dressing comprised completely of liquefied starfruit.

Put it all on a plate with half a papaya and call it a day:

Our first lunch was a success. What a colorful plate!

Korina’s analysis: The dry purple potatoes go down smooth with a glass of local skim milk. Just like peanut butter.

A Rough Day Mercifully Ends

Posted Sunday Sept. 26, 10 p.m.

For most of Sunday, Korina and I were holding our stomachs and complaining of hunger. Our diet of local greens wasn’t getting the job done.

The strange thing is that we’ve both done without protein for long stretches before — much longer than one afternoon. We concluded that we had just been skimpy with our portions, trying to make our farmers market haul last the whole week when there were perfectly good local food options all around us.

So for dinner, we wanted a hearty portion of comfort food. We picked up a pound of Big Island ground chuck at Foodland Farms in Aina Haina and mixed that with two pounds of chopped beefsteak tomatoes, some lentils and sprouts, and some jalapenos for a meaty chili. On top went some sauteed sweet potato. It was spicy and delicious, and we both ate with smiles on our faces. Our thirst was clenched with a glass of Ulupalakua Red from Tedeschi Winery on Maui.

We both ate until we were full — finally — and then actually had to stir-fry some additional vegetables so we would have something to bring for Monday lunch.

Here’s Korina’s soon-to-be-famous all-local chili:

Ground beef and lentils made this meal hearty and filling.

One day in the books, and we’re still alive to tell the tale!

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