Salad – Raw and Cooked

I’m currently reading Cooked by Michael Pollan. I love his passion for protecting our planet with a focus on food and how we fuel ourselves with it.

In this book he makes a case for cooking our food from scratch. This simple act is the solution to many of the problems in the world. My favorite creative endeavor is cooking. I mostly cook just for Kris, sometimes for sangha events and infrequently for friends and family.

I thought I’d begin sharing some of the food I prepare. Yesterday I made a salad of roasted carrots and Brussel sprouts with arugula, radishes, pistachio nuts, and beets drizzled with yuzu and good olive oil. This was topped with tuna salad made from canned tuna, capers, celery and onion tossed with mayonnaise and yogurt. I love this salad because I’m able to incorporate leftover roasted vegetables. Anything goes…it just has to be pretty!

Na Pali Coast, Kauai, Hawaii

We just got back from the visit to Kauai with friends and family from Arizona.

Here’s the gang:
Front
row:  Sandy (sister-in-law extraordinaire), Maureen (sweetest
gal…great hair & hat), a goofball, Cory (beautiful athlete),
Karen (just met new friend for life).
Second row:  Colin (amazing
brother of Kris), Fred (what can I say?  brilliant…you can tell),
Kris (my sweetie), and Rick (funnest farmer and great guy).

We signed up for a six hour sail down the Na Pali Coast with
snorkeling and a sunset dinner.  We brought our digital camera with the
underwater housing.  It’s been a bear for me to get accustomed to
shooting with it, but I managed to get one good photo of Kris:

I’ve
always wanted to see the Na Pali Coast, but never had the opportunity
since I’m usually there in the winter when the waves are too big.  I
can’t imagine a more dramatic and beautiful coast.  The colors of the
mountains are breathtaking with waterfalls and mist.  It rained, but
you can’t have rainbows without rain. 

Kris took the best photo of all:

Kauai

I love Kauai.  I’m kind of a rain, green, ocean, blue, trees person.

Bryan Maingot and I went over to Kauai for a job at the Hyatt Regency.  He flew in from Maui and we were hungry so I took him to my favorite old style saimin place called Hamura Saimin.  Saimin is a noodle soup indigenous to Hawaii created by plantation workers – it’s Chinese, Japanese, Hawaiian.  The best thing to have is any kind of saimin with barbeque sticks.  You have a choice of chicken or beef marinated in teriyaki sauce and grilled. Delicious…Ono in Hawaiian.

The following day we had some time before our flight so we checked out Hanapepe.  It’s very small with a few shops and a swinging bridge.  Very quaint and fun.   

I started a project I’ve always wanted to do – photograph small post offices…rural, unique, small.

http://www.eyeoftheislands.com/RLSGalleries/Kauai/index.html