Flavorin and Savorin

Hello all, Rachel here, I am finally contributing to this fine blog of Catherine’s creation. I am doing this in the form of recipes. This may be a bit dry unless you’re as into food as I am. We’ve been eating pretty well over here and we thought it would be a good idea to share some of our delicious creations. Most of our fresh food we either get from the farm we are staying on, the farmer’s market in town, or occasionally, the woods by our house. Also it’s all vegan besides a couple eggs from the chickens around the farm and some honey, also from the farm. I don’t remember the names of everything, but I’ll do my best, and I don’t really measure things, so amounts will be largely absent. Also some ingredient may be missing, I’m doing this all from memory, and it’s been awhile for some of these things.

I began my Hawaiian experience with a three-day lemon juice cleanse (with lemons from the farm), which was a great way to begin the healthy lifestyle we have been following here, and I definitely recommend it. The first night off of the cleanse I made a lovely stir-fry using ingredients from the farmers’ market unless otherwise noted.

Peanut Chili Stri-Fry

·        Eggplant

·        Zucchini

·        Purple sweet potatoes

·        Onion

·        Garlic

·        Sweet chili peanut sauce

·        Salt and pepper and other random spices that were left in our house

·        Lemon juice (from lemons on the farm)

For breakfast I have been making granola, we have to keep all the ingredients in the freezer so the ants can’t get to them. We tried leaving them out in tightly sealed bags and soon learned that ants can chew through plastic. And thus our sunflower seeds were infested. We picked out as many as we could and then put them in the freezer at Sanji’s suggestion. Ants are much easier to pick out when they’re frozen, however they do start to come back to life as they thaw out.

Granola

Mix the following:

·        Mixed grains (oats, buckwheat and spelt I think) – several cups

·        Sunflower seeds – maybe a half cup or so

·        Pumpkin seeds – same as sunflower seeds

·        Flax meal – probably a half cup, maybe a bit less

·        Chia seeds – quarter cup or so

·        Almonds – half cupish

·        Cinnamon – enough

·        Ginger – minced – I probably use about a half cup, but I’m obsessed with ginger, also we used wild ginger that we found by the river by our house and it’s not so strong

Heat and stir the following briefly on the stove:

·        Coconut oil - just a couple tablespoons, maybe a quarter cup

·        Maple syrup – quarter cup to half cup, depending on how sweet you want it

·        Blackstrap molasses – Probably about a quarter cup

Pour the liquids over the dries and stir. Since our ingredients are cold from the freezer you have to do this part pretty quick otherwise the coconut oil solidifies and then you just have coconut oily granola chunks and nobody wants that.

Spread all that out on a pan and cook it, I think I used 375, stir it part way through, take it out when its brownish and a bit crunchy. Then stir in some chopped dates, or whatever other dried fruit you want. I sliced some bananas and cooked those on top of the granola once which was pretty delicious.

Speaking of bananas, they grow everywhere here. I recently harvested my first couple racks of them. Banana trees only produce one rack of bananas, so to harvest them, you just chop down the whole tree. Unfortunately, the Big Island has been invaded by red ants, and they frequent the banana trees, so harvesting bananas here tends to be a rather painful experience. BUT no pain, no fried bananas. These have become an essential part of our morning routine. Simply slice up some ripe bananas and fry them in some coconut oil and they basically turn into candy. You can sprinkle on some cinnamon and/or vanilla extract for a little extra flava flav.  

For a raw breakfast option, I’ve almost made some protein bars. These are basically the same as the granola, but you also stir in some mashed banana and peanut butter and take out the maple syrup (the banana provides enough sweetness). Then just press all that into a pan, cut it up, and keep it in the fridge.

Sanji and I tried baking some ripe plantains today. We just sliced them up and baked them on a greased cookie sheet with some cinnamon sprinkled on top, and they were a delicious low-fat alternative to the fried option. I specify that they were ripe because you can also fry unripe bananas or plantains. They turn out kind of like French fries and are good with ketchup. 

Our next major dinner undertaking was soup. This began at the farmer’s market where Tam, Catherine and I each bought two ingredients and then we brought them all back and made soup from them. This resulted in food for the three of us for over a week and each night we varied it a little, adding noodles, quinoa, peanut butter, or eggs. The eggs were from the chickens on the farm, but they’re basically wild so you’ve got to find where they lay, which we’ve only managed to do twice. We also tried cooking ice cream beans that we had picked one night, but they didn’t turn out great.

Ice cream beans (they have another name that I forgot) come in large pods, about 2 feet long. Harvesting them involved a combination on Catherine picking them from atop my shoulders, and us whacking the pods out of the trees with bamboo poles. The beans themselves are covered in this squishy white stuff that you can eat and tastes a bit like ice cream. I tried making some juice out of it and it was sickly sweat, but was pretty good once I watered it down and added some lemon juice.

I found some old leftover soup in the back of the fridge tonight, it was a peanut butter quinoa version and surprisingly, it hadn’t gone bad, so I ate it. To be honest it brought back some good memories, that was some fine soup we had there, some real fine soup.

Curry soup

·        Some type of summer squash – I don’t remember the name, but it was over a foot long and green and harder than a normal summer squash, but pretty similar once cooked, maybe a little slimier

·        This weird squash thing with a zigzag-y outside that got real squishy when cooked

·        Carrots

·        Onion

·        Eggplant

·        Japanese? eggplant - may have been Thai, they were round and harder than our eggplants

·        Zucchini

·        Tomato Puree

·        Coconut milk

·        Curry Powder

·        Cumin

·        Salt and Pepper and stuff

Sometimes I also added molasses or agave to counteract the acidity of the tomato paste, sometimes some apple cider vinegar or these vinegar soaked hot peppers that Sanji has, sometimes lemon juice, that went especially well with the peanut butter. 

The soup was pretty delectable, we all ate it every day for about a week and a half and didn’t get sick of it. Catherine even missed it once it was gone.

Finally, we have been eating a lot of salads. Often times it’s all we have for dinner. The salad usually contains the following, all of which can be found at the farmers’ market and we’ve found that if we go at the end of the day, we often get free food thrown at us, last time we came home with three free papayas.

Salad

·        Kale

·        Spinach

·        Lettuce

·        Tomatoes

·        Avocado

·        Carrots

·        Cucumber

·        Sunflower seeds

·        Flax meal

·        Chia seeds (we love our seeds)

There’s two salad dressings I’ve been making for this exquisite base. The first was inspired by the copious amount of ginger we found.

Ginger Lemon Honey Dressing:

·        Ginger

·        Lemon juice

·        Oil – whatever type you fancy

·        Balsamic vinegar

·        Apple cider vinegar

·        Garlic

·        Honey

·        Salt and pepper

Blend until smooth

 The other dressing came from some pesto I made because Sanji came back with two shopping bags full of basil one day.

Pesto

Blend the following:

·        Sunflower seeds – soaked overnight

·        Lemon juice

·        Oil – olive is probably best

·        Basil

·        Apple cider vinegar

·        Optional – avocado, artichoke hearts

·        Salt and pepper

Pesto salad dressing

Add the following to the pesto:

·        More oil

·        More vinegar, probably apple cider and balsamic

I think that’s basically it

As I’m sure you’ve noticed, we have a limited set of ingredients, so we use the same things in a lot of our dishes. But we also cook largely based on what we can find around the farm or at the farmers’ market, which means almost all our food is local and in season resulting in deliciously fresh dishes with a low carbon footprint.