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Showing posts from September, 2010

Eat Local Challenge Week

Eating locally produced foods became green trend now.  My wife is excited to cook and eat local foods for 1 week that involves me and my son and her mother too.  Personally, I don't mind eating 100% locally as long as food is good. so why should we eat locally produced foods anyway? beside to avoid cooporate industrial food culture, large scale chemical farming and global distribution and long distance trucking being great concern to us. fresh and has better nutrients because the harvest is at the optimal stage. less transportation, less fuel used farmer's market and food stand require less packaging. require less or no chemicals (fungicide etc) and irradiation to preserve for long distance shipping and even required by law sometimes. garden can store food in the landscape.  fresh herbs, perennial vegetables. wild harvest (fish, mountain vegetables, game animals) are typically not available at stores locally produced foods are better adapted for our food culture and

Taro harvest - Eat local challenge

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Eat Local Challenge start this Sunday.  It was a good timing so we decide to harvest 2 rows of taro, perhaps 20lb or so.  There are some big ones and small ones.  They are all good cooked together in pressure cooker with peel on.  Once they are cooked, they peel real easy.  We harvest taro once or twice a month so not so much different from our ordinary routine of harvesting.  Taro doesn't store very well, but they store well in the landscape. Natural farming crops are supposed to store well in ordinary storage condition so maybe i'm not doing something right.  Taro also contains much water, so likely to rot, but cold storage may improve.  Typically my grandmother was storing her taro in cool, but not freezing condition to keep it alive and keep it from sprouting until spring.  If I can get enough refrigerator space, it may store well. Photos show our harvest of taro.  Not too bad for using no fertilizer at all.  Natural farming taro (or any other vegetables) are extremely

Why is it challenge to eat local? what's the core problem?

Thinking about Eat Local week, I came across some things that caught my attention that eating local seems like it's much more than just foods coming from local source. In many ways, we think it's hard to eat local.  Typically it's more expensive to buy local foods, they are not available at stores and it takes more energy to prepare meals from local ingredients.  Of course, it's easier to pop frozen pizza in the oven, or go eat out. OK, so if we live in a rural farming community like Hamakua coast on the Big island, where we are, it's still hard to get everything local because we have to plan ahead.  It's not very flexible.  Yes, once a week to farmer's market trip requires more planning than going to grocery store when we feel like it or when you can find time between work and kids demanding your presence. Yet, my greatest concern is that our imported food culture has forced the environment to adapt us instead of humans adapting the environment.  Like

A village without war and peace from One-straw revolution

Next week, September 21st, Tuesday is the International Day of Peace (peace day) so here's another peace topic. Why is it so hard to keep peace in this world?  If making peace or keeping peace is so easy, there wouldn't be major conflicts and wars being repeated in human history.  Then, is it natural for humans to make war? Perhaps what is perceived as natural to most humans is far deviated from the rest of the natural world so that what is natural to us is no longer true naturalness. Peace is a relative state that is dependent on the state of war, thus the best way of making peace seems to be getting rid of the notion of peace, that is, getting rid of the duality and relativity of peace and war. If we look at the world as competition or cooperation, we are still looking at the world through relativity.  There will always be high and low, strong and week, winners and losers. The following is an excerpt from "A Village Without War and Peace," a small chapter

Inner peace through tea

Tea and peace are always connected together.  Tea is a drink to calm and excite.  Peace is ...what is peace?  Peace gives great productivity and creativity to our mind.  Peaceful time throughout history in many nations, people and culture proliferated.  Peace gives people a creative outlet because there is less to worry about danger and possible control by instability of social conditions. Tea is popularized by the practice of zen buddhism and mindfulness.  Drinking tea was not only for its health benefit, but also to practice being mindful and to live the moment. Zen Master Zhaozhou of Tung dinasty and "Chichaqu" are speaking: Master Zhaozhou to inquires with Monk 1:  Have you been here before? Monk 1: No, I haven't Master:  Have some tea Master Z to Monk 2:  Have you been here before? Monk 2:  Yes, I have Master: Have some tea. Temple manager: Master, for one who has been here and for one who has not, you give the same answer, to drink tea.  What is the reas

Fishing with 2 year old

We got much of the summer field maintenance done in the tea fields, thanks to all the helpers. so I took my son along and went fishing.  He is 2 and 1/2 years old.  He is obviously too young to fish by himself so he just stand by my side and watch.  At least he knows how fishing is done.  I'm talking about shore fishing.  Set up gear, cast and reel.  Pretty simple.  He can't cast, so I cast, then he reels in, bit awkward, but since he's my son, he got a natural touch of fisherman.  He thinks casting and reeling is fishing because we haven't caught any. In Hawaii, Papio is a popular game fish.  It's a small Ulua, once it reaches 10lb it's called Ulua.  I spent much of youth fishing in Japan and my college years flyfishing in Sierra Nevada mountains and all over Northern California, catching many little ones and big ones so I know a bit about fishing, but just doing lure fishing with a little kid isn't as easy as one would think.  Perhaps I will use a bait n