It's not hard to wake up at 6:30 a.m. to go to the Kapi'olani Community College's Farmers' Market on Saturday mornings. It's not hard if you can imagine the delights that await you. There's a carnival atmosphere to it-enticing smells of breakfast plate lunches, mellow sounds of the guest musician, ("Days of our Youth" being sung this morning) free bites of exotic treats (hearts of palm, kim chee portuguese sausage) and many, many happy people standing patiently in line or checking out the extremely fresh produce. One row of tents, out of the three rows for vendors, is all prepared food. You can pick up a Thai coconut curry plate or bananas with sticky rice bundled in ti leaves and turn around and buy a Ziploc bag of braised beef shanks to warm up for dinner.
I "harvested" Dean's Greens, a mixture of a dozen or so varied greens from Waimanalo, huge Kula Country strawberries from Farm Fresh Hawai'i, teeny baby roses from Hiraoka Farms and a cream cheese blueberry scone from the KCC students. So, where do the whales come in? Be patient.
After checking out every vendor I have my own little tradition. I drive home to Kailua the long way, i.e., around Makapu'u. Not far from Hanauma Bay there is a lookout where you can park your car and you are just 10 feet from the edge of the cliff. That's where I have my breakfast of coffee, strawberries, the scone and a sweeping view of the Pacific.
I was blessed. Today, the whales were putting on a show. I call it whale soup. They cavort in a pod, spraying the air with their blowholes, slapping the water with their tails. For a brief heartstopping moment I counted 6 plumes of spray. I whipped out the binoculars that I always carry in the car and for a brief couple of minutes I'm out on the water with the whales! When the opportunity to see whales up close arises, you forget everything else, who you are, where you are and you just concentrate on focusing the binoc's lens.
The pod moved slowly from left to right along the coast, coming up for air about every 15 minutes. At the closest point they were only about a mile offshore. I saw two fishermen stop from checking their lines to stare at the parade of whales majestically going by.
It seems there are many times during the week when I pause to offer thanks to God for living in Hawai'i and being able to enjoy this abundant life.
-the foodie wahine
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Information on the Hawai'i Farm Bureau's Farmers' Markets can be found at http://www.hfbf.org
Copyright 2007 Anything to Eat. All rights reserved.
Saturday, March 3, 2007
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