All posts by Leslie Lang

Recipes, Tomatoes

Tomato Cake

1 Comment

Macario’s mom Blanche used to make a Tomato Cake. I knew her before she passed away suddenly a couple years back, but somehow I never tasted her Tomato Cake and I regret that.

This is the same woman who made an absolutely unparalleled Avocado Pie, which people are still talking about (in a good way). Maybe I’ll tell you about that another time.

But about that Tomato Cake. I poked around on the web looking for Tomato Cake recipes but only found recipes for spice cakes made with tomatoes, and Macario says no, no, no.

Blanche used a white cake recipe, but she substituted tomato juice for the liquid. She topped it with a white butter frosting that she mixed peach chunks into.

Macario looks hungry when he describes it and says the combination went together really well. I told him he could make me one for my upcoming birthday, and we both liked that idea.

What other interesting tomato recipes are floating around out there?

Eating Locally, Food Security, Music, New York City, Sustainability

Farm Aid

Last night’s Farm Aid concert took place in New York City.

Remember Farm Aid? The first annual Farm Aid concert, organized by Willie Nelson, Neil Young and John Mellencamp, was in 1985. Since then, the musician Dave Matthews has also joined the board. The nonprofit organization (mission: to keep family farmers on their land) has raised more than $30 million to “promote a strong and resilient family farm system of agriculture.”

I enjoyed this New York Times article for quotes like this one, from Willie Nelson.

For Mr. Nelson, Farm Aid’s ideals are a reminder of his childhood in Abbott, Tex. “We had organic food and didn’t know it for a long time,” he said. “It tasted great, and we only know that we grew it out in the back garden, and we had a lot of great potatoes and tomatoes and all our own vegetables. Then I left home to go on the road and I couldn’t find that food any more.”

The article goes on to say that there will be no “factory-farmed junk food” sold at the concert. All food offered at the 25,000-capacity venue will be from family farms.

“People have to take over their own food supply,” Mr. Nelson said. “They have to make sure whatever they eat is healthy and do whatever it takes to do that: shopping locally, farming locally, consuming locally.”

And I liked reading this, too, which is something we talk about here a lot:

Why New York? The city brings renewed news media attention to the long-running event, of course. Farm Aid was also invited here, said its executive director, Carolyn Mugar, by an assortment of environmentalists, politicians (including the mayor’s office) and chefs. Over the years Farm Aid has become part of what’s known as the Good Food Movement, alongside organizations working from various angles to roll back industrial farming and promote organic and sustainable food production — and consumption. While the city itself may not be farm country, it’s full of people who eat.

“Farmers are never going to survive if they don’t have as allies the people who want this good food,” Ms. Mugar said. “New York has a huge density of eaters and a density of people who are doing excellent things. There are restaurants, farmers’ markets, community-supported agriculture programs, even people who are growing food in the city and teaching people how to grow it.”

The Farm Aid website talks about how to find Good Food, as the organization defines it. Worth checking out.

Hamakua Coast, History

The Story of Hamakua

Hamakua Springs is located in, well, Hamakua, and today I thought I’d tell you a little about the Hamakua Coast of the Big Island of Hawai‘i.

Hamakua is one of the ancient districts of this island. It spreads just north of Hilo for about 50 miles up the coast to Waipi‘o Valley, which is a beautiful, deeply historical valley that was settled in the 13th century or earlier. Several powerful chiefs hailed from Waipi‘o.

The book Place Names of Hawai‘i, citing Nathaniel Bright Emerson’s Unwritten Literature of Hawaii, says “Hamakua” (poetic) means “kuhi loa.” “Long corner.” I’m assuming that refers to its physical location.

Here’s something to chew on: Almost no one pronounces “Hamakua” correctly. It’s properly pronounced HAA-MAA-KUA. There are kahakos—macrons, or stresses—on the first two As, meaning you hold them a little longer.

Few people even know that anymore. It’s as though we lived in Nevada and called it “Las Vee-gus” all the time.

Anyway. If you were to travel the Hamakua coast long ago, you would have walked along winding paths, up and down through gullies and streams. You’d have seen Hawaiian families living here and there, their grass homes tucked into the valleys and gulches, many of them growing kalo (taro).

In more recent years, the crop in Hamakua was sugar cane. The coast had sugar plantations and mills and the plantation villages that sprung up around them, and cane growing seemingly everywhere. And there was a railroad that ran where the main highway (19) is now, but which was destroyed in a 1946 tsunami and not rebuilt.

This island’s, and Hamakua’s, sugar chapter is over now, and now the story is about diversified agriculture. And that’s where Richard, and Hamakua Springs Country Farms, comes into the picture.

Rural Hamakua is a lovely, scenic place of much rainfall and therefore luxurious green rainforest. It is a coast of waterfalls, rivers, springs and streams, with prawns in them for the catching. Hamakua is also a place of swimming holes. Of sweet guavas that squish between your barefoot toes, or taste delicious if you get them before they fall. And waiawi, which are little strawberry guavas, both yellow ones and red ones. Right now the waiawi are abundant and fallen fruit is covering backroads like bright carpets.

On one side of the Hamakua coast are cliffs that reach down to the ocean, where you can watch whales pass by during their migrating season. Along the other side we see Mauna Kea, the volcano that stands magestically over us, and which is sometimes covered with an amazing cloak of snow in the winter.

There are probably other places as beautiful, but you’d have to do a lot of talking to convince me that there is a place MORE beautiful than Hamakua.

Food and Drink, The Good Life, Tomatoes

Tomato Revelry

Melissa Clark has a delicious article in today’s New York Times about cooking with tomatoes. After I read it, I actually had to go in the kitchen and prepare a snack.

Her summary:

“After purchasing bags of summer tomatoes from the farmer’s market, I spent the next week in decadent tomato revelry. Here’s a chronicle of my grand tomato tour.”

My summary:

Ummm. Pan con tomate (trust me; it sounds great); baked stuffed tomatoes with goat cheese fondue; multicolored tomato tartlets; instant tomato-ricotta “soup” with capers; red and yellow cherry tomato confit; gazpacho with watermelon and avocado; and green tomato and lemon marmalade.

My conclusion:

Tomorrow I am going to make gazpacho with watermelon and avocado. Or maybe I’ll roast some tomatoes, which “condenses and caramelizes the juices, turning a juicy, salad-worthy fruit into syrupy tomato candy.”

Food and Drink, Health

Bright and Healthy

5 Comments

This article is reason #87923829 to eat your vegetables.

It made me want to go and gnaw a bright, ruby red heirloom tomato right off the vine over at Hamakua Springs Country Farms. Here’s what the article is about:

Understanding the molecular structures of compounds that give certain fruits and vegetables their rich colors may help researchers find even more powerful cancer fighters, a new study suggests.

We might as well just ingest some of those rich colors straight up, don’t you think?

Remember, think “bright colors” next time you’re in the produce section.

Big Island, Sustainability

Hawaii Whole System Project

Richard recently showed me a really interesting report called The Hawaii Whole System Project.

This 84-page report, prepared by the Rocky Mountain Institute, was sponsored by the Omidyar family.

To wander away from my subject for just a moment: I was curious as to why the Omidyar family is interested in Hawai‘i and put its money into this in-depth look at agriculture on the Big Island, so I poked around the web a little.

It turns out that eBay founder Pierre Omidyar has a connection to Hawai‘i—he attended Punahou School and was recently named to its Board of Trustees. A quick Google search finds an interesting interview with him from when he was inducted into the Academy of Achievement and also that the philanthropist is one of Newsweek’s 15 People Who Make America Great.

“Business can be a force for good,” he says in that article. “You can make the world a better place and make money at the same time.” It sounds a lot like our hero Richard Ha, doesn’t it?

(You wouldn’t believe how much energy I have to expend, getting Richard to allow me to say things like that about him on his blog.)

From the report itself:

The Hawaii Whole System Project is a research and action project conducted by Rocky Mountain Institute on behalf of the Omidyar family. The Omidyar Family is pleased to sponsor this project to promote innovative, long-term planning and local self-reliance.

With the underlying assumption that local food and agriculture can be good for a community (expanded upon below), the goal of the first phase of this project, the phase contained in this document, is to understand the agricultural system on the Island of Hawaii in order to:

I. Identify the reasons why locally produced food holds such a small market share (about 85 percent of locally consumed food is imported according to several sources),

II. Define the barriers to increasing local market share and strengthening agriculture,

III. Locate leverage points that, when targeted with time or investment, could have multiple positive effects on local food and agriculture, and

IV. Identify business or non-profit opportunities that could activate these leverage points.

In order to identify the barriers to more local production and consumption, Phase I of the project focused on mapping the Hawaiian agriculture and food system. The research for Phase I consisted of gathering and studying published academic and government documents and analyzing agriculture and local food statistics from diverse sources, as well as interviewing people from up and down the food and agriculture value chain, from farmer to consumer, in order to understand the whole system, how it interacts with other systems such as energy, and how to influence it.

In Phase II, based on this preliminary research, the RMI team will analyze the feasibility of the opportunities. Finally in Phase III, the RMI team will work with The Kohala Center and other partners to bring together potential entrepreneurs and investors, as well as other people who might have an interest in local food and agriculture in order to act on the research findings.

It’s coming at us from all sides now – this interest in Hawai‘i’s sustainability and food security; this certainty that Hawai‘i doesn’t HAVE to import what the Whole System Project says is now 85 percent of its food.

In October, Richard will speak on these subjects at a food summit conference called Hawai‘i Island Food Summit: Our Food, Our Community, Our Future. It will be held October 5th and 5th at the Sheraton Keauhou Bay Hotel.

This two-day Summit will explore the visions, possibilities, ideas, and practical solutions to answering the question “How can Hawai’i Feed Itself?” We hope this conference will be a catalyst not only for changes in policy and practice at the island level, but a convening of the agricultural community to create a compelling vision for the future of food and farming across the state.

We’ll tell you more about all this as it comes up. You know we will.

Community, Film

Hamakua Jones

1 Comment

When Indiana Jones isn’t busy trying to keep Nazis from recovering the Ark of the Covenant, saving children from bloodthirsty cults or seeking the Holy Grail, what does he eat?

Why sweet, fresh Hamakua Springs vegetables, of course. After all, a guy’s gotta keep up his strength and his spirits.

[Leslie’s full disclosure: I’m about to bring my brother into this story.]

Steven Lang just finished working as Personal Chef for the Indiana Jones actor Harrison Ford and his girlfriend, the actress Calista Flockhart, when they were recently in town.

They were here because Harrison Ford was filming part of his fourth Indiana Jones movie in Hilo, which was standing in for a Southern American rainforest. The town buzzed a little; but only a little, because we’re pretty laidback here in Hilo. Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Cate Blanchette, John Hurt – there were some pretty high-powered people roaming around our sleepy little bayfront town.

Steve called both Harrison and Calista ahead of time, in Los Angeles, to discuss their food likes and dislikes, and he learned they are healthy eaters who like to eat fresh fish and other fresh foods.

So when gathering up his ingredients, one of the first places Steve hit was Hamakua Springs.

Steve had signed a non-disclosure agreement, so all they knew at the farm was that he had some big catering job. Charlotte told me everybody knew the movie people were in town, and that Richard kind of guessed Steve was cooking for some of them.

“But Steve didn’t take enough for the whole film crew,” she said, “so I hoped it was for Harrison Ford, because I’d heard he was already here.”

She loaded Steve up with tomatoes and lettuce, and then she went to a greenhouse where they grow specialty vegetables for Chef Alan Wong.

This isn’t really Charlotte creeping through the jungle to the greenhouse. It IS her with her Indiana Jones hat on, though. I made her pose for this picture.

“We had some extras and I pulled them right out of the greenhouse,” she said. “Our bright red beets that have a target design inside, and some baby carrots which are different colors: purple, ‘atomic red,’ and rainbow, which is a blend of yellow, white and orange.”

“I handed them to Steve and told him I hadn’t even washed them yet,” she said, “and he said that was okay because they’d know they were fresh.”

Harrison and Calista stayed in a rented private home located up above the farm. Steve told me he pointed out Hamakua Springs from the lanai, in order to show them how fresh their vegetables were. “These were picked this morning from that farm right there,” he showed them.

Harrison was interested in all the agriculture he noticed, and asked Steve about it. Steve told him about the island’s transition from a sugar plantation economy to one of diversified agriculture.

Maybe we should have finagled Harrison Ford a tour of Hamakua Springs Country Farms. Shoot—a missed opportunity.

Charlotte said she thought it was cool when she learned, after the job was over, that the produce was indeed for Harrison Ford. “Raiders of the Los Ark is one of my favorite movies of all time,” she told me. “My sister and I were always giddy over him.”

“Very cool, very cool,” she said. “It appeals to me that our vegetables would appeal to him. He’s not just any actor—he’s Indiana Jones!”

Steve said it was interesting walking around in that film world for a couple weeks, and that the job went well. “They are really, really nice people,” he said, “and they raved about the food.”

Must have been those vegetables.      

Community, Tomatoes

Samples

Did you see the special Agriculture & Energy Expo insert in the
Tribune-Herald recently? They used this photo of Richard and family on the cover.

Richard Ha Hamakua Springs

Richard, his mother Florence Ha, June, Kimo and Tracy (photo by Macario)

Tracy said that they were surprised to see that picture on the cover. “I was talking to Rob at the Hawai‘i Island Chamber of Commerce and he said they thought it was a nice presentation of agriculture,” she told me, “being that we had three generations.”

She and Kimo handed out samples of the farm’s heirloom tomatoes at the Expo. “People kept saying they didn’t know there were tomatoes that looked like that,” she said. “The different colors, the different shapes; and they were surprised that each individual variety of heirlooms has a different flavor.”

“A lot of people there knew our tomatoes already,” she said, “either from our donating cocktail tomatoes to the schools or they already buy them at the grocery stores. People were wanting to see our new products.”

Some of the tomatoes they offered as samples included Green Zebras, which are small, green crunchy tomatoes; the Purple Cherokees, which she describes as a dark, almost black tomato; and the bigger, bright yellow Striped Germans, which are very sweet and have a yellow and pink flesh.

“I only took a case of the heirlooms to sell,” she said, “because I didn’t know how people would react to them, but they sold out.” The heirloom tomatoes are starting to be available in one-lb. “clamshell” containers at local supermarkets.

Tracy and Kimo also sold Hamakua Springs lettuce, green onions and cucumbers at the Expo.

“I love doing the Expos,” said Tracy. “I like setting up the displays, and I’m a people person. When people stop by you get to talk story with them.”

Company News, Eating Locally, Tomatoes

Something New

The other day at the market I spotted something new and it really caught my attention. It was one of those plastic “clamshell” containers from Hamakua Springs and the label said “Vine Ripened Hamakua Gourmet Tomatoes.”

First, let me tell you that when it comes to Hamakua Springs produce, I qualify as a Frequent Eater. Long before I knew or worked with Richard, I discovered Hamakua Springs produce in the supermarket and it’s what I always bought. And since I’ve been working with Hamakua Springs, I’ve been lucky to have enjoyed more great produce—even some that is still in the experimental stages and not yet available in the markets, which is really fun to me.

And I’ve enjoyed a lot of the company’s delicious heirloom tomatoes, which Hamakua Springs has been producing for and selling to restaurants throughout the state. Really enjoyed them.

These clamshells I saw at the market have different combinations of heirloom tomatoes. I bought one with two small, deep red heirlooms and a large, broad, deep orange and yellow one that smells like sunshine and summer and green vines and a grandma’s garden. Inside it’s streaked with red, and its name is “Striped German.” They are Real Tomatoes, unlike the tasteless tomatoes you can buy in the stores—these are exceptionally delicious tomatoes—and that delights me.

The big one is sitting here in front of me as I write, and I’m planning how we’ll enjoy it. Maybe I’ll do what Richard likes to do with his beefsteak tomatoes: Refrigerate it for awhile, and then cut firm, sweet, delicious slices and eat them with a little Hawaiian salt.

We ate the two small red heirlooms with their deep red/purple flesh a couple days ago when we had people over for dinner. I cut them up and put them in a green salad. And even admidst all the pieces of carrot, cucumber, red bell pepper and sugar snap peas, the tomatos stood out. Biting into one meant getting a little burst of incredible flavor. Summer. Memories. (Did you all grow up eating tomatoes out of the garden?)

The big, fat and sometimes funny-looking heirlooms are great for cooking with, Richard has told me. Sometimes I chop them up and cook them in olive oil with some garlic and onion, and a little Hawaiian salt and lemon pepper, and then put that over pasta. That plus a tasty, quick salad and maybe a chunk of good bread makes an easy, delicious dinner, and I love when we eat like that. Healthy, light, good eating with natural ingredients, most of which come from ’round these parts.

I’m going to go put this burst of flavor in the refrigerator now, and all day I’ll anticipate having cold, delicious slices of sweet, ripe tomato with our dinner tonight.

Books, Eating Locally

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle

1 Comment

I read this New York Times review of the new Barbara Kingsolver book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle and knew it would be interesting. From the review’s first paragraph:

“A few years ago, the novelist Barbara Kingsolver packed her husband and two daughters into a car and left their home in Tucson for good, resettling on a farm in southern Appalachia. Their intention was to spend a year of their new rural life eating only what they could grow themselves or buy from local suppliers. The plan was no whim. Kingsolver and her husband, Steven L. Hopp, a biologist who teaches environmental studies, had been raising fruit and vegetables at Hopp’s farm every summer since they met.”

Great author, really interesting topic — and it’s the sort of thing that’s really on my radar since I’ve gotten to know Richard Ha and Hamakua Springs. It reminds me of our recent interview with Andrea Dean, who did something similar here on the Big Island. I got the book and just started reading. Will report back on how it is!