How To Eat on Hawai'i, Part I

   

  For a while before we came to Hawaii, and for a short time after we arrived, I was concerned about how we would be set for food. Most of what we would eat, we realized, would have to come to us through work trade, and I couldn't imagine that was going to add up to very much. We ate reasonably well back in Tucson, cooking good, mostly healthy food at home and even managing to go out to a meal from time to time when we weren't feeling too cheap. During our three-week stay in Washington, we ate at a level we both found a little embarrassing, especially when you take into account the lofty goals we had set for ourselves before leaving.

      Our biggest fear was that the transition from a sometimes-rich to consistently spartan diet would be a terrible shock to our systems, and to deaden the impact we concentrated on eating healthier meals in smaller portions, with an increased amount of vegetables and whole grains. We got into eating multigrain cereals in the morning, and brown rice or quinoa with dinner. We told ourselves that when we got to Washington, we'd just have to insist to our families and friends that we just weren't going to eat the same gut-rotting poison that everyone else was eating—oh no, we were health nuts now, our bodies were goddamn Buddhist temples.

      The first meal we had after being picked up at the airport was an all-you-can-eat buffet at the Tulalip Casino off I-5. We stuffed ourselves with grilled salmon and fried chicken and crab legs and pork ribs and pie. And while we stayed with our parents, our meals were, if anything, heavier than what we'd normally eat at home: we had steak one or two nights, a pork roast was consumed at some point, we dove into yummy treats at the Calico Cupboards in both La Conner and Mount Vernon (not to mention some of the fatty, sweet, big-as-your-head apple fritters from the Donut House in Anacortes) and, even though I had weaned myself off of caffeine for the previous two weeks to prevent the inevitable withdrawal symptoms from the lack of same in Hawaii, I spent our time with the folks drinking Costco coffee every morning, plus the odd latte, just because I could.

      We were going to be wrecks when we got to Hawaii. I visualized us trying to squeak by on two spoonfuls of cooked rice a day, monastic rations that wouldn't keep a hummingbird from dropping dead. We'd resort to foraging off the land, forced to eat worms and bugs and roadkill. After two weeks, we'd have the sunken, emaciated look of war refugees, or vegans.

Now that about a month has gone by, I'm pleased to say that we didn't die. We've lost some weight, enough that some of our tighter clothes fit a little looser, and this can be put down the combination of exercise and not eating nearly as many sweets as we used to. We showed up to the farming co-op with a few handfuls of trail mix and a couple of apples. By the next day, we were inundated with fruits and greens. It was still much less than we were accustomed to eating on a daily basis, but we seemed to do alright and never felt like we were going hungry. Mostly I put it down to the stress of moving to a new, unusual place, and the implicit understanding that we were going to have to adapt or be very uncomfortable.

      It was only a few days later that a package we had mailed to ourselves from Tucson arrived at the post office, and along with some extra supplies such as rubber boots, a small frying pan and saucepan, there were also rice and beans. These had been a staple for us back in Tucson, and we've found they go very well with fried greens and a little soy sauce or hot sauce.

      After about a week we made into town to replenish our pantry even more, mainly with basics such as peanut butter, tea, more rice and beans, hot cereal, and things we'd need to prevent our diet from becoming monotonous and bland such as hot sauce (Hula Girl chipotle habanero, with a vintage-looking 1940's grass-skirted pinup on the bottle), curry, cinnamon, and cumin. As we've gotten more settled in, we've become better situated to prepare meals that taste good and cover most of our nutritional needs.

      Which isn't to say there haven't been mishaps. We were told that the pea of the pigeon pea tree is perfectly edible, and we were interested in giving them a try, seeing as we had a bunch of it growing just a few feet away. We elected to boil it, and flavor it with some sweet chile sauce. Unshucked pigeon pea, as we discovered, boils up fine when it's young and tender. As we were told later, they're mainly good when they've matured and been shucked from their pods. That in-between phase? The pods are tough and chewy like hay, bad enough that we had to spit most of them out. It's something like chewing on the woody part of an old asparagus. It also stained the water red like raspberry Kool-Aid, which made us wonder if anyone's ever used it as a fabric dye.

      That's been the only really negative culinary experience we've had so far; most of the time I'd say we do great. The jack fruit and yamagata avocados I described in the first post finally ripened after about two weeks. Neither of us knew anything about jack fruit except that its flavor is reputed to have been the basis for Juicy Fruit gum. That's not surprising—as we've found, the meat of the fruit is mildly fibrous and chewy, giving it a consistency not unlike a wad of bubble gum. Most of the meat is comprised of soft, yellowish pods encasing seeds about the size and shape of beach pebbles. There are other portions that contain no seeds. We had to use a butchers knife to cut through the fruit's thick, spiky hide, separating it into two halves. As you can see from the picture, the interior isn't pretty to look at, a bit like an extraterrestrial egg or the inside of an ant colony.

      The avocados went well with sea salt, salsa, chips, or sliced and served in an omelet. We each ate half of one avocado one morning and were full until lunch. Seriously, they're at least as big as softballs.  They also make a damn fine guacamole. We recently acquired three more, which is good because the tree they came from is about done for the season.

      I've included a few photos of some things we've put together in the last few weeks. Not all of the ingredients came from local farmers, but a lot of them did. Elmer supplied us with eggs from his own chickens. They're fertilized eggs, which are allegedly better for you. Not that we care either way—farm eggs are always better than store-bought. The chickens tend to be better fed, have room to run around, and always produce a better-tasting egg. The first time that I recall eating local eggs, I couldn't believe the difference in quality. It makes you think that the factory-raised stuff must come from some pretty sickly chickens, fed the same kind of stock feed all day and stuffed into cages where they can't forage on their own. Chickens that eat well, lay well.

Eggs over easy with tapioca hashbrowns and sliced bananas

Barbecue pork over sautéed kale, onions, and garlic 

      Tapioca root, we're really pleased to find out, makes decent hash browns. The farmers that gave them to us said that they never really cook down to the point where they're soft, so Hannah figured that by grating and frying them, we might wind up with something similar to, but firmer than, hash browns made with potatoes. We've done this twice and they seem to fry up really well with a little butter and oil.

Fried banana chips and ketchup

      Cooking with green bananas has been another discovery for us, and a useful way to reduce the huge quantity of bananas we seem to wind up with. At that stage, they have almost the same consistency as raw potatoes, and can be cooked much the same way. Hannah's decided she prefers banana french fries to the traditional kind. They seem to fry best when sliced to about a quarter inch. We tried boiling them once and the result was adequate but not satisfying, plus the sticky latex sap from the peels is a pain to clean off the inside of the pot.

Continued in Part II