imu cooking

next in the series of hawai'i reportback is the imu.
imu is the traditional hawaiian pit oven, dug into the ground and filled with hot lava rocks. traditional foods cooked in the imu include pua'a - pig, 'ulu - breadfruit, and 'uala - sweet potato, which are wrapped in ti leaves and placed in the pit with the hot rocks, on top of juicy mai'a - banana stumps, leaves, and burlap and then the pit is filled in with dirt to seal the baking process. one of my favorite dishes is laulau, where your pork or fish is wrapped first in lu'au leaves - kalo (taro) leaves, and then wrapped in a ti leaf package.
we dug a pit into some friends' yard this year around the holidays to do an imu. we prepared breadfruit, sweet potato, kalua pork, and pork laulau, as well as a bunch of turkeys that were bought in a sale frenzy, some rice pudding, and coconut stuffing.


since it had rained every day for weeks, the wood was a bit wet and we had some difficulty getting the fire started to heat the lava rocks. however, using new technologies such as the leaf blower and some hardwood pallets snagged from a local business, we were able to get up and running.

word to the wise: don't get too involved in your firestarting to notice if your hair has started burning off.
as the rocks were heating, we were chopping and crushing the banana stumps, which are very high in moisture and provide the steaming effect for the imu. this is a great material to use because bananas reproduce asexually from suckers that shoot off the side of the plant, so when a banana tree bears fruit it must be cut down (or it dies on its own) to provide room for the next shoot to emerge.

once the fire burned down and the rocks were sufficiently hot we covered them with the banana stumps and then laid our food on top of them. as you can see the steam is working its magic already.


from there the food gets covered first with banana leaves.


then with palm fronds.

usually the next layer is burlap, but we used a couple of tarps.

from here the edges first get sealed shut with dirt.


and then the whole thing is buried.


and then you leave it cooking for several hours while you go fly kites.


and when you get back you do the process in reverse.
you dig out the dirt.


and peel back the tarps.


and it looks like a crazy sea organism.


and then you check the turkey to make sure it's done.


and shred the meats.


and the feast is on.


thanks to my stepmom, kat, for the photos.

new year's traditions

the past three weeks marty and i spent in hawai'i with my family for the holidays. and while we were enjoying ourselves and even doing radical domestic stuff, i couldn't bring myself to sit in front of the computer to blog about it. but now we're home and so it's time to catch up on the vacay postings.

we'll start with mochi pounding.


mochitsuki, the pounding and making of mochi, is a japanese new year's tradition, and my family joins our closest friends on kaua'i each year before the new year to pound it out and roll it up.


the process starts the day before, soaking the mochi rice overnight. after soaking, the mochi rice is put into the seiro, a series wooden steaming frames, and steamed.

the hot cooked rice is then put into the usu, a big carved stone bowl, where it is pounded with a kine or wooden mallet. typically three mochi pounders go to work first smashing and then pounding the mochi in rhythm.


the job is then finished up by one pounder while one adept person with quick hands scrapes the sticky mochi from the sides of the bowl between pounds with the mallet.


when the mochi has reached optimum consistency it's delivered to a wax paper and katakuriko , potato starch - covered table where the mochi gets made. one person pinches off little balls of mochi and the others form, pinching and patting them in their hands into the proper mochi shape.

some mochi are made with an, adzuki bean paste, in the center. we've also branched out to non-traditional but oh-so-tasty varieties like chocolate-peanut buter filled mochi.

most of the mochi are made into standard palm-sized confections, with a few batches made into special sizes for new year's traditions, such the tiny mochi balls used for ozoni, a soup made with mochi. also, special mochi are made for the kagami mochi, a traditional new year's decoration and offering made with one smaller mochi atop a larger mochi, which is then topped with a mandarin orange with the leaf attached.


the kagami takes its place near the entrance to the home at new year's time along with the kadomatsu, an arrangement of bamboo, pine and flowers that sybolize good luck for the coming year.
my family spends new year's eve with our friends, eating traditional good luck foods, such as toshikoshi soba (yeah, buckwheat!) and lighting off fireworks. our established tradition in the past few years is to build what we call a "morning glory circle" around our fire pit in the front yard. this tradition started one year when we had a few boxes of those fireworks called morning glories, which resemble sparklers but have the added effect of popping off sparks and being a little more firey. bored with the typical use of holding and drawing shapes in the air with these sticks, we planted them in a circle and lit the whole thing on fire. this was great fun, and each year the amount of boxes of morning glories showing up at our house multiplied exponentially, such that the circle of planted morning glories is now feet deep and the fire produced at midnight when we light the circle resembles something nuclear. here are some images of this year's circle, which we built in the back since the front yard was too saturated from weeks of rain.

happy new year.

dragonfly quilt complete

the dragonfly quilt is finally finished!
i spent a fair amount of time the past week doing the finishing stitching - both by machine and by hand and i'm so pleased with how it turned out. allow me to share some pictures with you.
i decided to outline the paper pieced dragonfly squares to set them off a bit.


here's the initials piece in context:


marty and i designed a stitching pattern for the middle based on the thunderbolt design of payton's home and the colors of the four directions. i initially did this by machine, but took it out in favor of hand stitching.


here's some of the stippling stitching i did with the free-motion darning foot on my bernette - very fun, it makes the dragonflies pop out in a nice puffy way.


as per marty's suggestion, some of the dragonflies and other bugs got little bee-line trails stitched behind them.
other blocks got outlines inside them.


even the back looks exciting. you can really see the stitching that i did in darker colors to match the quilt top.


here's the bias binding, stitched by hand on the back side, of course.


i was convinced to sign this quilt, something i've never done in previous quilts, but it seemed like a nice idea.


i made two quilted potholders for payton's mama as well.


the quilt and potholders got packaged up and sent out today - hope they like them!

soup to nuts

or rather veggie waste to soup stock.
sele and i share a CSA (community supported agriculture) veggie box from the terra firma farm - check out their website for some cute farmin' bulldogs pictures. meaning we have a sort of veggie subscription to this local farm and they bring fresh vegetables into oakland once a week for us to enjoy.
our household has been greatly improved both by the CSA share and by the addition of our curbside recycling pail (thanks, oakland). and this week i'm excited to share my one step further in the direction of reducing waste and serving up deliciousness in the form of homemade vegetable stock.
i notice that with each meal i prepare there is a fair amount of vegetable matter that goes to waste - those stems and trimmings that are edible but i'm just not going to put in the effort to make them taste good. so i started a tupperware container in my fridge to keep the trimmings in until i have enough to make soup stock. i wasn't sure if they would accumulate fast enough to make soup, so i labeled the container "veggie stock or compost" - i'm a labeling maniac - and figured nothing lost if they started getting soggy before i had enough to make a decent pot of stock. i was surprized at how quickly that container filled up, and today i took advantage of the chill in the air to warm up and aromafy the house with some simmering stock.
over the course of this week i had accumulated: some beet stems (i ate the beets and the greens, but the stems were a little tough), red chard stems, broccoli stems, and cilantro stems, to which i added two small onions, about 6 whole cloves of garlic, some black peppercorns, two carrots (terra firma makes some darn good carrots), and a sprinkle of salt, thyme, and chili powder.

i left all those things simmering in a big pot of water for a couple of hours, and then turned off the heat and went for a walk. when i came back from my walk i was famished and stood over the pot slurping tastes of the stock - which was so good i decided to pour myself a bowl - of just veggie broth! and i thought it was so tasty because i was so hungry, but even after i ate my lunch and was belly full, i went back for more - this stuff is great!

here are some of the contents of our CSA box a few weeks ago - so exciting!

i'm looking forward to having a weekly ritual of veggie broth production and freezing with my vegetable scraps. there's nothing i like more than making something great out of something i would otherwise throw away.
a tip i read in a magazine this weekend but forgot to do myself: make sure your vegetables stay under the water surface level by placing a collapsable metal steamer on top of the veggies in the pot.
and if you've been wondering what the phrase "soup to nuts" means, like i have, here's wikipedia's explanation. my question is: who has nuts for desert?