Pork squash à la community garden

A community garden twist on a Filipino dish. 

Chunks of my home bred pig, with vegetables from the community garden harvest table: onion, tomato, snow peas, peas, some green cabbage, and 2 tender pipinola squash, cut into chunks. Alas, I did not have the fresh garlic or the fish sauce to make it more traditionally flavored. I made do with garlic salt, Bragg's amino acids, and Hawaiian chili pepper paste (my go-to seasonings).

The 

I may be watching too much tv!

Yes, I stopped what I was doing and laughed out loud, for several seconds, maybe a minute, Heck, I'm still smiling, so it can't be ALL bad! And at a commercial. A young father finishes feeding his baby in the highchair. BIG mess. All over high chair, all over baby face, all over. He says, "you wait right there, buddy, while I go get a wipe to clean you up before mommy gets home." He goes to the kitchen, comes back a moment later with a container of wipes, looks at his baby, and..... The baby is perfectly clean, face, chair, everything but the little stain on the bib. He gapes, then looks over at their big shaggy dog, licking his lips and looking proud of himself. The father shrugs his shoulders, says, "Works for me," and puts the wipes back. The next scene, he's giving the dog a cookie (guess it's a reward) that guarantees fresh breath. "So your pet can get closer." Which is what the ad is for. Wait! This keeps getting funnier! It sounds like they are advocating dog nannies that perform oral clean up. (Lack of opposable thumbs limits their ability to effectively use wipes.) Oh, no, ok, it's medium funny. I think they want your dogs breath to be fresh because that's going to happen, whether it's planned or not. Dogs can reach kids' faces. Period. Kids faces always have interesting stuff on them. Interesting to dogs. Ergo, dogs will lick kids' faces if they are within reach. I don't understand why they aren't pushing clean or antibacterial saliva or some such nonsense. I'll have to watch for it again. Maybe it was, but I was laughing so hard, I missed the punchline of the ad! It could have been "clean" instead of "fresh". Hmmm.

More good stuff from Tom Selleck

Please don't come my cable off, but I learned another good one from Blue Bloods. 

When someone threatens me with, "I could blah blah blah," I've been saying either, "Yep, you can do anything you want," or "Do whatever your conscience allows." But this one, from the PC is better: "That's your choice. I've already made mine." That ends the subject, I suppose.

Wisdom from.... Wherever!

Words of wisdom from the Reagan family on "Blue Bloods ":

If you can't afford to pay both your rent and your car payment, pay the car payment first. You can live in your car. You can't drive your house.

More on my crazy love of fresh food!

Yes! I am still loving the fresh vegetables I am so blessed to receive and help (in such a small way) to raise. Tuesday there were all these fragrant bail blossoms available, so I grabbed a bunch. They smelled so lovely all the way home, filling the jeep with their fragrance! 

The next day, I was thirsty, opened my fridge, spotted some thawed lemon and/or lime juice from last year's abundance and had a thought! I made some delicious lemon-limeade with stevia, filtered water, juice, and a few of the fresh basil flower fronds. I drank most of the pitcher that day! I made another pitcher today, with fresh-squeezed lime juice and took a photo:

Hmm... Looks nicer URL, when you can see that those dark bits are little flowers!

As long as I had the bail out, I used most of the leaves I had left, some of the flowers, fresh garlic, almonds, and evoo to make a food processor full of pesto (if you can still call it that). I left some still in the food processor, and added infused coconut oil and fried leaf to enhance a batch, for those who would like the medicated version. The pesto is a little bitter; I think it's because some of the stem, if it was tender enough, got into the pesto. The bitter taste is momentary, or fleeting, so if you don't mind that, it has an otherwise very pleasant taste. Again, here's a photo:

The portion in the jar is regular pesto I put aside for a friend, the darker stuff on the right is medicated pesto, and the portion in the front is regular.  Mmmmm.. Stay tuned for more!

Dragonfruit

I counted the viable dragonfruits on our plants - 31! Ate one last night. Thought about taking a picture, but it was so juicy, dark magenta and delicious that I didn't grab the camera until it was... Gone. Ah well.

Guilty!

True confessions, right here on the feather blog! I am a mindless cleptomaniac! When I got home Tuesday,, after working at the community garden, look what I found in my pocket:

The marking pen! OMG! Now I have too remember to bring it back. 😳

Fresh food makes a party in my mouth!

I am sitting here enjoying a lovely cup of local coffee, ground together with local cacao beans, just savoring the recent party in my mouth. I spent a few hours weeding in the community garden last week, and had brought home many lovely fresh veggies. Today, for a lunch, I scrubbed up and boiled some redskins that I had just seen my friend pull up out of the ground (a first for me) with some cauliflower from the garden (ugly, but, oh, my...). A little sea salt (harvested by hand), organic butter, sour cream. I never tasted anything so sweet. I couldn't tell if the cauliflower or the potato was so sweet and special. So I tasted each individually and they both tasted wonderfully sweet and special in their own way! My mouth is still, many minutes later, remembering the goodness. Simple, nourishing food. And I can't remember any food tasting better..mmmm

Using medical marijuana

It's been a year and a half now, since I have begun replacing pain meds with medical marijuana. All legal, with a license, blah, blah. It's taken the better part of that year to figure out how to grow, process, use, administer, control strength and dosage, etc., for my new medicine. As I was trying a new  marijuana recipe today, I thought perhaps I should share some of my recipes, experiences, successes, and failures, to help others trying to navigate the switch from fast-acting, precisely formulated pharma to self-grown nature's bounty with all the uncertainty that entails.

Here where I live, in Hawai'i, I received a license to use medical marijuana, like a prescription, from my doctor. All legal. But I couldn't buy pot or seeds or plants, because to buy or sell it is illegal (at the moment). But I can have up to 3 oz. If I can somehow get it. And I can grow up to 7 plants. If I can somehow acquire and start them. After somehow acquiring the raw material, I can smoke it, extract it, infuse it, eat it, anything except use butane to make hash with it. Any other hash reduction is ok.

But, if 64 with constant pain from arthritis and severe restless leg syndrome, I want to be able to move without as much pain, to be able to do things and be active. I don't want to sit in a laz-Z-boy and smoke just to be pain free. Therefore, I've learned many recipes so that I can reduce my plants to edibles, and experimented to achieve moderate doses. I plan to share some on this blog, so, as Rachell says, watch this space! Groan.

I forgot to mention...

The ACTUAL design on the Vera Wang shirt, which can really only be seen when the shirt is all smoothed out, which doesn't occur in nature, i.e., when being worn by a human, is composed of flowers, similar to hibiscus. Go figure. I still like it and will still wear it, regardless of what a cranky man here and there might think or say! Hehe!!!

Vera Wang- clouds or cow?

I really scored at a local clothing swap with this awesome Vera Wang design shirt:

I just thought, cool colors, cool design, long enough for leggings, lose enough for comfort, love art first sight! I wrote it to bridge the other day and a cranky old man called me a cow. He has said much worse in the past; but this time he was ungraciously referring to the print on my shirt. I shrugged it off, as I do most everything else he says, but as I took it out of the wash to hang up, I took another look. Now, I wouldn't really mind wearing a cowprint shirt, honestly, this looks more like awesome colored clouds! Dark, stormy and dramatic. I just don't get the cow feel here. Do you?

Heaven right here in Ka'u

Here I sit, eating fresh pesto plopped into some sour cream for dip with an assortment of veggies to dip for a light lunch. All from the local community garden. Delightful! (As I nurse my sore muscles - hey, that feels kinda good also!)

Keeping powdery mildew away

I've had lots of problems with powdery mildew. For the last few months, however, this product, purchased at Ace Hardware, sprayed on my plants once a week, has successfully kept my plants mildew-free!

I am

As I bask in the afterglow of intense healing and allow the chi to work within me,

I am

.            Both

Extremely vulnerable

.            And

Extremely strong.

As I go out into the world to meet friends, acquaintances, work, I reflect on how both states, together, are okay.

A salty success!

After collecting a small bucket of seawater at South Point the other day, today I miraculously see the snow-white and tasty rewards of our efforts!

Today's thought

I was driving up the hill to my friend's house this afternoon and two important thoughts occurred to me.

1. When I first visited the Big Island, it felt  like a place of healing. Now, here, most of my time and energy are spent healing. 

2. Seek to learn and a teacher will appear. So exactly happened. And I am grateful.