Sio and his pool

Sio is Sesi's brother.

One day while in Tonga,

he took us to the seaside to enjoy a BBQ feast.

We started with freshly caught crab.

Yes Sesi is sitting on a roof.

The roof is of the wee house Kelemani has built by the bay

where the fishermen base themselves.

Base means they hang out until they see the fish jumping out in the bay

then they wade out to where they are can catch them in nets,
then wade back to shore.
It's pretty relaxed.

Sometimes there are lots and sometimes there isn't.

Such is fishing.

They fish primarily to feed their families,

but when there is a surplus they take them down to the Vava'u harbour

and sell them under a tree by the market.

I kind of wish I'd bought some fish when we were at the market

cause life can be hard when you live in a subsistence economy

with little cash in circulation.

But on the other hand, everyone is very generous and gives what they have,

 knowing when they are in need they will be helped.

But back to the eating...

This fishy was delicious.

Thrown onto the hot tin roof* until cooked perfectly.

Then on a taro leaf,

peal back the skin with that middle sized knife,

(there are only large knives in Tonga - it's a guy thing)

and hot, white fish flesh gobbled down quickly.

I seriously considered using the middle sized knife to fight Sesi for the fish.

BBQing in Tonga is a snazzy thing.

*Corrugated iron is put on the ground,

you light a fire with what ever is around,

then you can either just chuck what ever you are eating into the fire,

well those things with a skin you need to peal away

to get to the yummy morsel inside.

OR

you can get another piece of iron,

shape it a little then angle it to made a cooking plate,

like a giant frying pan with no temperature gauge.

We also had beef that came from the funeral

(still to post about that!).

Sio just sliced off some beef fat,

threw it on the iron,

when it sizzled up, threw on some sliced up beef

and Bob's your uncle!

Surf and turf BBQ Tongan style.

Works for me.

What didn't work for me was raw fish.

When Sio mentioned it earlier,

I thought he meant marinated raw fish,

which I love but he didn't.

He mean actual raw fishy fish,

just caught fish,

only just stopped flipping out fresh fish,

snap its head off,

squish out it's guts,

fresh, raw fishy fish.

Sio with a fish who has just lost it's head

that he is about to squish it's guts out onto the ground and devour.

I thought he was going to start chasing me with it.

Which would have totally unfair cause he plays semi pro rugby in Australia

and I don't...

play rugby, get paid for it or live in Australia, or run or play with my food.

This is Sio's pool.

Well it's on the family land,

(land is a whole complex structure of 'ownership' but is much more straight forward

and honest than the Western version of a very similar structure but still complex).

It is the King's pool,
where the King, I guess of Vava'u would go to bathe.
The Queen too,
actually probably the Queen mostly.
I could easily see the Queen and all the women hanging out in the cool water
washing their hair and gossipping about the men.
That's what I'd do.

It's a fresh water stream of the most purest water,
that flows from under the rocks out into the bay.
It pools here naturally but has been helped by
Sio building a wee dam that allows the water to flow out under the dam wall.

Sio was rightly proud with his slice of land on the bay.
It's yet another slice of paradise in Tonga.
The pool was bliss after a walk in the hot sun,
it was a gem that reveled itself in it's cooling freshness.

And I'm not going to tell you where it is.

Organic Puna

It's our last couple days in Hawaii.

I think all of us are well and truly ready to go home.

I'm even looking forward to sitting by the fire and

being toasty warm while it's bitterly cold outside.  

Surprisingly Hawaii has not been that warm.  

For a tropical island that relies on tourism

they could have a little consistency in temperature.  

This is an island of change.

Cool misty rain in Waimea, heat and humidity in Kona,

dry and desert like in between,

actually in between Waimea and Kona.  

What I really have not enjoyed is air conditioning.

I just don't understand why anyone would want to freeze themselves all the time.  

It really is not that hot in Hawaii!

It could be that we've spent our time with ranchers and

they dress western style - jeans and boots, all day, everyday.  

I guess they do that because their animals are less tame than ours.  

Actually that's ridiculous.

Animals are as tame or as wild as you let them be.  

Gentleness goes a long way with animals.... and people.  

But this is not the American way.  

Almost everything about America is brash and aggressive

but in the most polite way.  

We visited Jeff and Lynn at Kopoho,

 down on the coast near Puna.  

According the Hawaiian kids with us Puna is ghetto.

According to Becky, Puna isn't that bad.  

From what I saw, it looks the same as anywhere else we've been on the Big Island. 

Until we headed down to the coast.  

You know those hippies from the 60s?

I know where they've gone.  

Old hippies don't OD or fade away on the edges of Berkley,

they move to Puna.  

It's hot, humid and bra optional.  

Jeff and Lynn moved to Puna right down by the 'beach'.

Really a lumpy, bumpy coast made up of pahoehoe lava.

This part of the island is recent lava flow, as recent as the 1960s.

Jeff and Lynn moved from Northern California ten years ago,

a long time after the '60s,

which they probably remember through the haze of Haight Ashbury summer of love.

They moved away from high land prices

as they were to retire early and wanted to create their own garden of Eden.

Sorry for the referrence to conventional, conservative values there.

Jeff was keen to move back to the northern East Coast but

they vacationed in Hawaii and being good, kind of corporate California hippies

visited the Big Island where Lynn felt the bond with the land.  

It's Pele

(the goddess not the soccer player)

who creates the connection with women.  

I must say I think I've felt it myself.

Jeff and Lynn are gently carving out a diverse garden of fruits, working with the land,

bending to the will of the weather and climate.  

Their three acres in a long, narrow strip rolling back from the Pacific are filled with

star fruit, avocado, pineapples, coconut, papaya, mango and banana trees

with vege patches surrounded with comfrey and healing herbs

with a few noni trees filling in the spaces.  

Not mention vanilla pods.

The kids and the rest of us wandered around listening to

Jeff and Lynn explain what the trees were and

what they produced, their healing qualities and how they were cared for,

what grew well and what failed and why.

 

Their gentleness held the undercurrent of their Americanness.

Their care was authoritarian and convienced theirs is the way,

the only way, bless them. 

They didn't really see the irony of their words as they decried Monsanto

(which, oddly is in this computer's predictive text)  

while setting about bending their environment to their will.  

But they did it in a pleasing and caring way.  

They fed us with a fruit salad made up of fruit from their garden.

Freshly grated coconut and cups fill of coconut water,

mushy papaya, crisp star fruit, firm mango and the most delicious white pineapple.

We ate their fruit and

(above delightful Tessa, graceful Lauren and refreshing Laura)

I observed the cultural differences.

Hippies aren't that different from the ranchers,

the women just don't wear bras.

This may be horse related.

On July 5th Louly and I took ten young New Zealand farm kids to Hawaii for an agricultural exchange for two weeks. They are members of the NYZF TeenAg programme. We were hosted by East Hawaii 4H specifically the Beatons and Stouts. We visited many kinds of agricultural and horticultural operations, varied and diverse, learned that American ag folks like to philosophise about their place in the world and had a great time snorkeling and shopping in the sun. These posts are in no particular order cause I was too busy to post while in Hawaii and can be rather abstract and should only be taken as an inaccurate at best record.

its winter

It's 6.09pm and it's dark.

Winter has arrived.

That means roast dinners, stews and root veges.

I'm not a fan of winter

but one thing I like about winter is the long conversations

that result from the earlier darkness.

That's means random, reminiscing, rambling conversations

and lots of laughter

about things like the best biscuits you remember.

I remember these biscuits that had cartoon faces cut out of them

and filled with white cream.

Oh they were so yummy and special.

That was back in the day when shop bought biscuits

were such a treat.

Or white bread with golden syrup that for some reason made the bread crispy.

Or golden syrup or honey on wheatbix halves.

Or cold milk and too much milo.

Or pink waffer biscuits, cameo cremes, the old toffee pops.

Why is it that food remembered tastes so wonderful

and flavoursome?

I remember a chicken meal at the Brisbane, QLD Hilton

that melted in my mouth.

Then the silkiness of chicken livers sauteed in chili peppers and whiskey

every Thursday night in Los Gatos, CA.

Or the fresh, tanginess of a beef salad in Feilding, NZ.

And the refreshing, coolness of lime sorbet at the Octagon in Christchurch.

A while ago I mentioned that I had started a diet.

I've kept going and have slowly lost 15kgs (33lbs)

mostly from taking sugar and processed food out of my diet.

I started following the Dukan diet but that wasn't sustainable

so I kept trucking along without processed food

though struggled wtih NO chocolate.

Then I got onto the Cohen Clinic diet and that has made all the difference.

It's all fresh veges, a little meat and some fruit.

My stomach has shrunk and a fist size of food is more than enough.

That and reading David Gillespie's Big Fat Lies book.

Gillespie's thing is that sugar is poison

and I'm inclined to believe him.

Chocolate now goes straight through me.

It's tastes super sweet and tacky.

I dream of chocolate but know that it won't taste like I want it to.

When I have had chocolate I have been ill.

Just ill.

Sick to my stomach.

Crampy and sore.

I think I learn my lesson but in my humanness,

I struggle.

I'll get there.

yum

Some thing is going on in my tummy.

I'm craving healthy foods

Quinoa patties

yum!

What I am having for dinner tomorrow is

courgettes with mozzarella and roma tomatoes grilled on top.

Like courgette pizza.

I eat a lot of courgettes.

Two years ago as part of my adoration

of the Pioneer Woman

Dae bought me Pioneer Woman's cookbook.

Oh the recipes in this book!

Wonderful looking and yet I made none.

The food was so American and heavy.

Entirely suitable for a farm environment.
Food that will fill your belly and put hair on your chest.

Is that the silliest saying or what?

a normal

Saturday at last.

I mean that as in this is the first Saturday I've had at home for ages.

And normal it was.

It was blissfully hot, I walked into town

town being a few shops and the bank

a walk being less than a kilometre

worked up a glow

spent money and all I came back with was four Christmas cards.

Speaking of Christmas cards

this is the photo Louly and I created for the NZYF Christmas card

I love small towns.

When we didn't have enough boots, I ducked into ATS to borrow a couple of pairs for 10 minutes, then Louly went across to Hammer Hardware to borrow the tinsel. Gotta love shopkeepers who let you borrow their merchandise instead of buy it.

I know we are late with getting our Christmas cards ready but with the last month I've had it's a miracle I remember that it's Christmas at all.

But back to my normal Saturday.

I repotted all my tomatoes and cucumbers, there was even a tiny cucumber starting on one plant. I drove into big town to get lamb pallets just to fatten Clary and Penelope Darling up that little bit more and just as I got back into the car Sarah txted to offer a spot of lamb slaughtering for the afternoon. I declined cause I'd just bought the food - once that's finished though.....

Now I have a pantry full of baking ingredients and I'm going to get off this couch and make cookies - not Christmas ones just my usual Pooh's chocolate chip ones.

Yesterday at work we received a book about Marshmallow Farms, I love it!

Did you know that marshmallows grow on farms? It is marshmallow season at the moment and they will be ripening in the sun, turning from green to white and then the tractors will come and take them away to the marshmallow factory so we can have yummy, powdery marshmallows for Christmas.

Louly's boyfriend, Greasy he is a marshmallow contractor.

Go have a look at the marshmallow farms website and buy the book for your favourite kid!

One odd thing of late is the number of mice we are catching and by that I mean in a trap. Four to date and it's not their usual time for coming inside. Wonder whats up with that??

Risotto

I love gladware containers and I love getting ready for winter

Today was autumn cleaning day

Typical us, getting the wrong season but why would you spring clean when you can finally be outside in the sun and enjoy the fresh, scented spring scented air?

So we autumn clean and bake and prepare for winter laziness.

Today's effort was lots of lovely chicken, red pepper and pine nut risotto. I like it when I first make it but I love it reheated for lunch. I love how after heating and turning out on to the plate the risotto keeps it's shape from the gladware container. It's like having a little risotto cake or dining in a restaurant that makes risotto just like I do. Who knew that presentation was the big difference between my cooking and Jamie Oliver's?

One meal I miss because I truly can not make it, is chicken livers sauteed in peppers and whiskey. Man alive the creamy texture of the liver, bite of the whiskey and lasting heat of the peppers is just delicious. When I used have it every week with Chiara. We used to enjoy a ice cold beer with it then for desert have Dove bars with vodka chasers. That used kick my taste buds on their butt. We used to watch Murder She Wrote and dine on livers, ice cream and liquor. A good Thursday night every week.

That was before I joined the LDS Church and began to follow the Word of Wisdom but a few years after I went to visit Chiara, maker of said chicken livers. She cooked up those chicken livers and I ate them in all their sinful yummiest sans the liquid refreshments, there's only so far you can go. It was almost like a time machine only without Murder She Wrote on the telly.

I had the forethought to 'confess' my sin before I committed it to ol'Apes which probably makes it all worse but I am weak in the face of chicken livers. My failing.