Mar

dumpster pizza

This is Honolulu’s 11th straight day of rain, which would make one think there would be more time for writing. Instead (computer-ing during a lightning storm is sort of sketchy) we have been cooking, eating and acting like cooped up fowls (no offense to our lovely ladies outside, who really ARE cooped up in this awful weather, much respect). Netflix has been amazing, there are so many awesome documentaries in our queue… Dive was fantastic and led to a late night jaunt to our Beretania Foodland where, lo and behold, we found four garbage cans full of very mildy bruised zuchinni, tomato, Kabocha squash, spinach, papaya, and bok choy. It was quite a success. We went back the next day during some light and noted that the cans were labeled “Hog Farm”, which gave us some sort of relief over the mass of wasted food. There happen to be three house-less citizens just down the ave….we do wonder why good food is thrown out and not sent to the shelter. Well, of course we don’t really wonder anymore… . On a delicious note- we made a wonderful pie out of our ‘found’ food.

mozzarella, dumpster spinach and tomatoes, and a whole wheat crust.

75 days ago Short URL Comments

Jan

urban farm fresh eggs!

The one on the left is a store-bought mainland egg, the right from our little Bushy hen. Note the richer yolk and thicker white on the right. P.S.- thanks for the stainless steel pots & pans mom!

132 days ago Short URL Comments

Jan

paper making

We had a very large trash bag full of used recyclable paper glaring at me for the better part of the year. For last minute holiday tags, the kids and I put it to great use by following the recipe on Pioneer Thinking. We added echinacea seeds to the pulp mixture in order to make the tags plantable once dried. It was a fun project, seemed very water intensive our first go at it- something to improve upon. Aaron says the big paper plants recycle their water to conserve it, the best we could do was pour it and the stranded seed mulch around the avocado tree. There are now little echinacea plants growing around the base of it. Pretty neat.

The resulting paper was a shade of light grey/violet. This may have been because of the newspaper in the pulp mix. After it dried it was cut in quarters, some rough edges still left- and we glued old snowflakes from a gorgeous broken tree garland to the tags and wrote “Happy New Year, re-use the snowflake, plant the tag” on each one.

132 days ago Short URL Comments

Jan

ECOhana opens our home to children!

As an experienced nanny, I’ve decided to open our home to children!
Openings for ages 1-5 at our home-based playschool….

Located between bustling Downtown and Manoa Valley, our urban homestead is the perfect place for your little sprout to learn and play in a creative, holistic setting. As a mother of two, I am offering this unique opportunity to fellow parents who believe that teaching our children about sustainability is one of our prime responsibilities. Fortunately, learning about sustainability is inherently fun!

Experience includes 7+ years of private nanny services for visitors and home-based childcare for local families. References are available upon request.

Rates are $10 per hour with a 3 hour minimum. Playschool open on Monday, Wednesday and Friday from 7am to 7pm.

To schedule a visit with your child, please call Robyn at (808) 936-5572

133 days ago Short URL Comments

Dec

vermicast harvest

After four months of feeding our red wrigglers our food waste, enough black gold has accumulated to complement the supersoil mix that Aaron concocted in the grow beds. We will also use it to amend an organic soil from locally sourced Niu Nursery and make worm tea (which, thanks to the weather- was more collecting than making) For poo, it always amazes me how good it smells! Rich, earthy, clean. After harvest last night, the pots of vermicast had been left outdoors in larger plastic tub. A passing rainstorm drenched the soil and in the morning, a dark, concentrated tea remained at the bottom of the tub. The diluted tea makes a nutrient dense fertilizer that can be fed to plants on a weekly basis. Glenn Martinez, of Olomana Gardens, introduced us to worm tea a few years ago. We used some tea in a spray bottle on the soil encircling a cherry tomato plant that was near death. The next day, the plant was revived and later went on to fruit. This is a wonderful system that enables us to make use of our food waste, diverting it from the landfill and feeding it to worms who then provide the rich castings to plant more food. To start your own worm bucket- check out Waikiki Worm Co. or Olomana Gardens.

158 days ago Short URL Comments

Soil/vermicast/worm tea/Worms

Dec

bread baking (no machine required?)

Okay, so basically I was under the impression that you needed some fancy contraption to bake proper loaves of bread. Boy, have I been set straight! On my last trip to AMFM I stopped by the Baker Dudes North Shore stand and asked baker/proprieter Mike, if I needed a machine to bake luscious loaves of homemade bread. What followed was such a schooling that I immediately felt like a complete donkey for asking. He explained to me that there is little you actually NEED to make bread. Keep it simple- flour, water and yeast. Mixed by hand, left to rise, a few good cracks and pop it in the oven. Like Jaime Netzer from Mother Earth News proclaims- “The process of baking bread is like an homage to our past: One of our oldest foods is also one of the most satisfying to create from scratch”.

Sounds fun right? I used this recipe from The Joy of Cooking, omitting one cup of the white flour for one cup of Bob’s Red Mill Whole Wheat flour.

This is a quick and easy yeast bread designed to work with quick-rise yeast, regular active dry yeast works too. Stir together in a large bowl:

2 cups bread flour
1 tbsp. sugar
1 package (2? teaspoons) quick-rise or active dry yeast
1? tsp. salt

Add:
1 cup very warm (115 to 125 degrees) water
2 tbsp. butter or margarine, melted or softened

Mix by hand or on low speed for 1 minute. Add 1/4 cup at a time until the dough is moist but not sticky:
1 to 1/4 cups bread flour

Knead for about 10 minutes by hand until the dough is smooth and elastic. Transfer the dough to an oiled bowl and turn it over to coat with oil.

Cover the bowl loosely with plastic wrap and let rise in a warm place (75 to 85 degrees) until doubled in bulk, 40 to 45 minutes. Grease a 9-by-5 inch loaf pan. Punch down the dough, form it into a loaf, and place seam side down in the pan. Oil the surface and cover loosely with a clean cloth. Let rise in a warm place until doubled in bulk, 20 to 45 minutes. Preheat the oven to 450 degrees. Bake the loaf for 10 minutes. Reduce the heat to 350 degrees and bake about 30 minutes more. Bake until the crust is golden brown. Remove the loaf from the pan to a rack and let cool completely.

Yields: One 9-by-5-inch loaf

P.S. When it came out of the oven we poured garlic butter over it and had it with spaghetti before I could take a picture! It was delicious!

158 days ago Short URL Comments

baking/bread/Homemade

Dec

nesting box: done!

The hens have indicated their dissatisfaction. This morning I found their malodorous cardboard box turned upside down with the girls poised triumphantly on top as if they were to have their picture taken. A good example of one of those ‘temporary fixes’- the cardboard box was meant to stay for a week or two tops. But, with kids and final exams for the semester it was inevitable that it became a slightly funky smelling reminder of overdue chores. So, with a little help from the trusty ol’ SawszAll, I dissected an old pallet (our liberator when we can’t afford re-used lumber) and finished the nesting box.

A little skew, but roughly the necessary requirements of a comforting and safe place for the girls to lay their eggs. The pint-sized homesteaders filled the box with hay and it was moved into the coop!

Curious what others did for community nesting, I discovered rudimentary boxes that were not so ‘temporary’ and seem to please their hens just fine. Were catering to divas.

176 days ago Short URL Comments

Nov

farm foraged Kauai Thanksgiving

A day in the barn kitchen with animals and children at our feet. On the return- a feast with all ingredients sourced directly from the farm, or foraged for on Kauai! 100% local. Cassava chips & guacamole, imu duck, kalo leaf & coconut stew, sweet potato mash, stream caught crawfish stew, kale salad, banana crepes, coco-Lilikoi and lemon-basil sorbet, tahitian lime pie with Mac nut crust. The many lovingly prepared dishes that guests brought that were also made from 100% locally sources ingredients. My sister, Joanna, sliced the neck off of 34 salvaged wine bottles carefully selected for their shades of green and blue. These are what we planned to toast our good fortune and bounty with Koloa rum and coconut cocktails. But with a wobbly 5 gallon jug sitting on the back of a quad, we were destined to have an assortment of Hawaiian beer and wine in our wine-bottle glasses instead. Of course, my family spent Black Friday muddy and up to their knees in coconut flakes, cassava peelings, chicken poo and other sorts of heavenly farm fortified goodness. Sure beats standing in a line well past bedtime waiting for the doors of an arbitrary marketing scheme to open.

ECOhanaHI