Monday, July 7, 2008

July 2008, What is so close to us -- Hokena Beach

We often work so hard we can forget we have a wonderful beach just about 15 minutes away from us.


Here we are July 7th -- with a very nice and relaxing spot.

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Lot’s of people see the beach, but what about what is up higher? This is a view from way up in the caves looking out from the side of the mountain! It’s a steep climb up to these caves, and no specific trail, but very doable. Take your water and also a camera!
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And what do the caves look like inside? Here Ric and I are in the middle of an inside fork.
As you can tell it is massive.
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People actually can come and stay for $5 a person a night at this beach. It has its own outdoor shower for washing from swims, and then a complete bathroom with plenty of hot water. There are a nice number of camping sites some with barbecue pits. You just need to select a site and see a park attendant to pay your fee before it gets dark... Since we are about mile marker 105, it is just a two mile trip down our mountain, then from 105 to 101 and then maybe another 2 miles down to the beach. Along the way there is a nice local grocery store where you can stop and buy sandwiches and drinks if you want. Often times (unless we just pick up and go -- which can happen if we get rained out from work) we will make our own tuna sandwiches or spam musubis.

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<<CLICK HERE To download this whole brochure about Hokena>>

Sunday, June 22, 2008

June 21, 2008, Kona's First Annual Gay Pride Event

Another historical event, Kona does it’s first ever Gay Pride Parade and Fair. We spent a lot of time scurrying to get all our stuff in order to attend. We were invited right at the last moment and there was some confusion several times, not too difficult to imagine since this was the first ever time and they were doing everything from ground zero.

We were next to some realtors, not far from a health booth and across from the Pilagro for Mayor booth.

Here we are -- we were in a narrow slot with landscaping all around us.
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Jerry came with and helped us with the pre-set up and set up, and he helped sell products during the expo.
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Our menu so to speak...
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We were visited by royalty..
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The group poses -- very cute!
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As usual, Jerry knows a lot of people!
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Tuesday, May 20, 2008

May 2008_We Make Spam Musubis

Musubis — we make those ourselves when we know we will have a beach day. They often sell these for $2.00 a piece at yard sales even. Problem with making them is they are best that day — hard to really refrigerate rice and have it taste good.

Nothing complex about them, and when you have the little plastic assembly device they are very easy to form, cut and handle. We do ours with rice, spam, eggs, seaweed and Furikake [say frutikaki] (which unfortunately many places these days omit and without that seasoning sprinkled on it is a totally different experience)..

The first two pictures show you what you should end up with. These are actually from some we made at an earlier session.

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And for this photo series, this was the setting -- in our farm kitchen, Ric on the left doing most of the process and Jerry on the right to help and give his input...

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Cut fairly then and then pan fry your spam like these below..
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Fry up some eggs, they don’t need to be too buttery or oily and well done, flat not fluffed up, you’d certainly not want scrambled.
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A nice big hot bowl of white rice, not too watery, not too hot if possible, definitely not cold.
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This mold and press device is what helps make the procedure go smoothly.
They make this small size and also one much wider.
Wal-Mart, Longs, most of the grocery stores should have this device in stock.
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Don’t forget the Furikake -- these are deluxe seasonings that really make this treat stand out.
We show three but there are dozens of choices with the many flavors and brands on the market.
You can find these at Wal-Mart, K-Mart, even the grocery stores as these are very much part of the local food.
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The seaweed wrap will also be essential to bring out the full flavor.
Available all over even so much in demand that Costco’s sells it in BIG packages.
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We begin with the seaweed and the mold...
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Traditionally you would put a bottom blanket of a tea leaf into a nice container to prepare for when you have these ready to transport. The tea leaf is often planted near the entrances to gates, the surrounding peremeters of homes, next to your entrance doors of any home or business, and put onto the dashboard before you take a trip. They are supposed to keep evil away and protect you from things you can’t see but they repel.
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We will always trim the seaweed to better fit the mold we are working with. This makes it much easier to wrap and the taste will be better balanced for what is inside the wrapper.
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After you have the wrap sorted, you put rice into the form about a finger high it looks, and you press the plunger down.
A scoop, like an ice cream scoop, might make it easier to judge how much (since you’ll be doing this several dozen times) and keeps your fingers from getting so much rice which can make it harder to do the other parts of the processing.
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Now add a layer (a piece) of spam.
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Press a generous portion of egg on top, but you don’t want too much or it will overwhelm the other flavors.
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Spread out the egg as evenly as you can over the whole layer.
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There you have it -- one of the most important parts is adding the seasonings on top of the egg!
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Add rice on top next.
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Here’s about how much rice we used for our set this time.
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Press the last layer of rice down, and you can see it is rather a firm press with both thumbs.
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Lift up and you are done with this step part of building the musubi.
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Once you are done -- wrap it up to keep it moist and anything else (like flies) out.
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The finished product. Most people could probably eat two or three. But they are sort of like “Chinese Food” you can eat a couple and then still want more an hour or two later.
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The finished product, looking forward so you can see the layers.
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Wednesday, April 16, 2008

April 16, 2008_We run an intranet ad at the St. Louis Police Department

This is the year we want to try to really start selling our coffee. So far, there has been a lot of stuff to do that did not leave much time left over for “extras” like promotions. A friend of ours from St. Louis gave us a ring and offered to put us on a private internet and so this advertisement was created to meet that need. It follows through with the theme from the brochure...

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Sunday, March 16, 2008

March 2008_New business cards and a brochure

We decide it is time to get our brochure together and to re-make our business cards...

Here is an inside look of our three-fold brochure.
You can click in this sentence to download a full copy of our coffee farm brochure in PDF format to your computer.

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Also, we thought the new version of our business card turned out very cute...

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Saturday, February 23, 2008

February 2008_Aka Presents a BreadFruit Seminar (Can you say Ulu)

This is a flyer that advertised Aka’s Workshop on Ulu
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One thing about moving to a farm is trying to learn what grows all around us that we can harvest and eat. This is also in line with the idea of sustainability -- you should find and eat what you are growing, and plant more of those things you might want to eat. One of those things is Ulu or Hawaiian Breadfruit.

We just happen to have currently staying on the farm one who knows all about this subject, Aka Dooley. And so on Feburary 23rd, Ric and Jerry attended what was to be an all afternoon affair.

In the pictures below...

On the left you see the small group participating in the workshop as Aka is at the outdoor stove whipping up some ulu-fare and showing the group exactly how it’s done!

Right Aka inside has many platters of food ready for participants to take home to savor!
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We will probably have much more to say about Aka, but just a brief introduction...

Aka and Brody live in the cottage that is near by our house on the farm.

Aka is quite a ham, she loves to have her pictures taken and we will oblige and put a couple more below for you to see..
Aka is very multifaceted, right below left she is “at home on the farm”.. Then on the right she is more formalized..

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This is Brody, Aka’s husband..

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Aka is a teacher, is thought to be a healer, and much more. Below, a friend of ours from St. Louis “gets a reading” by Aka on our back lanai at the farm in Honaunau
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Thursday, January 24, 2008

January 2008, We get a sorter/grader for the dry mill

eJanuary 25, 2008_We get a sorter/grader ... this means we can separate out the PEABERRY!

This was built by a local coffee farmer. It is an interesting device, green beans are shaken and they bounce over several sets of screens in a progressive manner (small screens going toward larger screens).
As the beans shake across the screens the are sorted in the buckets below.

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Depending upon what you want to grade or sort out and the nature of your beans you could use any combination of these screens. The unit comes with a full set!

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