Foraging: Hawaii

I wanted my second post to be about hunting but since I am currently in Hawaii for close to two weeks I have decided to share a little bit about foraging for food...

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Yesterday I turned to my bedmate after 11 hours of sleep and pronounced in a Jamaican accent, "Ya mon, it's time to get up then." Laughing a good belly laugh with one of your best friends is not a bad way to wake up in the morning. What makes it even better is that laying in bed we have a view of the backyard with tangerine and grapefruit trees. Beyond the trees is a chicken coup and beyond that the sun rising over the ocean. The island life lures you to sleep shortly after the sun sets and keeps you there until the layers of bird calls are loud enough to rouse you. On the agenda this morning was foraging for food.

How to become a modern forager in Hawaii: Rent a car from an irritating man with long hair and a mustache. Get in car and drive down roads with produce falling from trees along the road.

We barely made it down the driveway before spying avocados on the ground. We screeched on the brakes, backed up and hopped out. You see, if you pick an avocado off the tree it will not ripen for a week or more. BUT, if you are willing to pick your food from the ground you will find avocados that are ripe today or will be in a day or two. The running theme with foraging is finding food sans, gulp, maggots or flies that lead to maggots. Okay, it sounds really gross at first but that is just because you are really used to having your food already picked, washed and presented in a grocery. Trust me, maggots, although they still make me squeal, are not so bad if you get to know them.

The next stop was a macadamia nut tree. Alecia and I became little monkeys; squatting down on the ground and collecting nuts--squealing each time a worm was making his way around the inside of the black fibrous outer shell and filling our pockets each time we found a quality nut. Like a neandertal discovering how to use a rock as a tool, I nested a mac nut between two large rocks and slammed the pointy edge down on it. The seam of the shell cracked under two more hard thrusts, exposing the white flesh of the nut itself. Picking apart pieces of the outer casing, I used my now dirty fingers to pry the raw nut out and pop it into my mouth. Success!

There would be many occasions of battling spider webs and climbing trees on this mission to retrieve papayas soft and warm from the sun, guava and something called granadilla that I first had in Peru. Granadilla have an inner sack like a raw egg that is filled with the sweetest crunchy seeds. Deciding if the food we found was both edible and without pests is what Michael Pollan has coined the omnivore's dilemma. Is the food edible, poisonous, bug-filled, tasty? Knowledge that is mostly taken for granted when food is acquired via grocery or farmer's markets.

Despite the fact that mango season is still weeks away here, I managed to find a perfect although not yet ripe one on the side of the road. Noni, which are a dime a dozen, is a fruit you let ripen until it nearly melts--sounds great right? At this point you squeeze it like a wet sponge and drink the blue-cheese smelling juice--DISGUSTING and something I will leave for my counterpart to describe thank you very much. We also found a baby-sized jackfruit that, again, you let ripen until it is mushy but this time it tastes like juicy fruit gum not ratten (rotten + ratty). What I think is a relative of jackfruit is breadfruit. Finding two on the ground that looked like they were covered in bird poo, I bent over to grab them and beetles scattered. I examined the breadfruit for holes where maggots could call home and found none. Later we would scoop out the batter-like fruit and make pancakes with it. We also found a cacao pod which has super bitter seeds--even after the cacao is allowed to ferment and then become what we call chocolate.

Aside from foraging (and beach time), we toured a mango and pineapple farm a couple days ago and may help the farmer plant a few things in the days to come. Later on this week we will visit an organic lettuce farm on foreclosed land. Tuesday we will attend a workshop about the local food movement here and ways to educate Hawaiians on how to get more of their food locally. Not surprisingly, due to strict policies on invasive species, all food that is imported into Hawaii is sprayed with chemicals to kill unwanted pests. Sadly, and despite the fact that avocados are falling from trees here, Hawaii cannot export avocados to the mainland because of a pest that is invasive to varieties grown in California.

So far we have only spent $25 on food for two people for 5 days--not too shabby!

Stay posted for more food adventures!