Thanksgiving and Food

I figured I would spend this post talking about the products of two previous events.  One was the field trip to Sweet Home Waimanalo, at which I was given an 'ulu (breadfruit), which I allowed to ripen on my kitchen counter for a few weeks.  At this point, which was a couple weeks ago, I decided it was time to cook the 'ulu so I did what I normally do when I have a random food product-- I look up recipes online and get a basic idea of what to do with it.  One of the first videos I started with was this one:



I thought this was really interesting, as it showed a traditional cooking method.  However, for obvious reasons, I couldn't do it quite this way in my home kitchen.  On the same website I found a method which involved peeling the 'ulu with a potato peeler, cutting it into quarters in order to remove the core, then chopping it into small chunks which I steamed in a pot.  I then strained the chunks and mixed them with olive oil, some vinaigrette, and some herbs in order to make a kind of breadfruit salad.

It was on the trip to Sweet Home Waimanalo that I was inspired to restart my garden.  The vegetables I was growing were ready for their first harvest right about Thanksgiving.  Here's a couple pictures of the patch on Thanksgiving day.  This majority of this small patch came from one bag of seeds which costs about $1.50.  The bag was a mesclun mix which consisted of a few types of cabbages and some other leafy greens like arugula.  I harvested enough for a large salad just and hour before our Thanksgiving meal, but it seemed like I hardly made a dent in the patch.  There was a sense of pride I experienced harvesting the greens, as I had spent the last month or so watering the small patch every morning.