Marmalade Daydreams

Came home this morning to find this little guy licking up the remnants of whatever tasty beverage I had last night. Lizards like beer residue? Wonders never cease.

One of the most amazing things for me here has been to have a substantial number of my calories in the day come from produce that grows in my yard (I've been eating 3 mangoes a day) or in the neighborhood. In addition to the availability of locally caught fish, it's been providing me with an amazing sense of where I am. For example, I came home the other day with a breadfruit that I found on the street. Traditionally a large part of the Hawaiian diet, breadfruit is an odd looking thing, a lumpy green mass which exudes a white sticky sap (which can be used to caulk boats, strangely enough). Not to be content with just the one fruit, my gracious host drove us up the Likelike Highway (pronounced lee-kay lee-kay, although I prefer Likey-likey) into a nearby lush rainforest valley, where he knew of some more breadfruit trees by the side of the road. When I plucked the fruit off the tree (not an easy feat), it began to gush this white latex like a hemorraghing alien. I tell you, it's not easy to get this stuff off the cutting board. We sliced up the under-ripe breadfruit and made pretty decent fries out of it. The over-ripe one I put into a pudding concoction with my leftovers from my second, mildly toxic experiment in local ingredients.

While most greens are a bit pricier at the supermarket here than they are at home (actually, they're probably the same as the are at Whole Foods or Fairway, but they're not as good), taro leaves are very reasonably priced. I figured they would be similar to collard greens or kale. I found a Samoan recipe to make a little coconut/onion/lemon mixture, wrap it in the taro leaf, and steam it in little pockets. While washing these enormous leaves (also known as elephant ears) we wondered if they were edible raw. Ever the scientific experimenter, I tore off a small piece, chewed it up and swallowed. "It's okay", I said. "A little bitter." Moments later, a painful burning sensation roiled across my tongue, the insides of my cheeks and my throat. It was painful to swallow. A little research uncovered that the taro leaf deposits sharp calcium crystals to deter herbivore predation; cooking denatures the crystals so they are edible. Painful to humans, toxic to birds and reptiles (so in the long run, it's a good thing I didn't sign up to have that chameleon DNA inserted in my blastocyst, though I still think it would be awesome...). Oh, local flora: why do you mock me?

Still, last night cooked up a killer dinner based entirely on wares from the Chinatown market (like Asia, but cleaner) and our front yard (beloved mango tree), straight from the Zack Stein cookbook: Poached Salmon with Mango Salsa, served with Green Beans sauteed in olive oil, lemon & garlic. It came out fantastic; my host said it was the best meal he can remember eating on his porch. So keep that in mind when considering letting me sleep on your couch for weeks on end -- I'll buy groceries and cook for you!

I've been a bit lax about bringing my camera everywhere with me, but it's true. Although I live in a city, it's beautiful pretty much everywhere you go. Just to clarify, the first two pictures in the post below are views from near my house: the first is the view of downtown and the ocean from my street, the second is a view of the Pali valley (right outside my window) taken from the top of the Punchbowl crater that we are on the side of (formerly a depository for human sacrifices, it's now a military cemetery. The more things change...).

Here's a picture from (an unusually
flat portion of) my bike ride
between home and campus.