The weather's been less than optimal lately, unless you happen to be a duck or a toad or a fungus.Last Thursday night, I attended my first Hawaii Island Tea Society meeting. The Tea Society is a non-profit organization recently formed to promote the cultivation and processing of tea as a crop on the Big Island. Tea grows well here and artisan tea masters are now beginning to understand how best to process theirs for high quality green, oolong or black teas. At this meeting, a grower in the Volcano area demonstrated his method for processing and drying oolong. We all tasted his finished product and, I must say, this was not my grandma's Lipton. This tea, completely unadorned, was flowery fragrant, smooth and mellow. It tasted naturally sweet. The difference between green, oolong and black teas are not the plants but the length of time the tea is oxidized and fermented before drying. For oolong, only the top three leaves of a new shoot are picked. For green, only the top two. For black, a leaf or two below the top three can be included. All three are equally good for you, loaded with antioxidants.
So I'm now very excited about planting my first cuttings. Meanwhile, we've planted a few more coffee trees and a cacao.
Saturday was a killer at the winery. A coworker called in sick and I was called in early. There were just two of us manning the tasting bars on the first day of a holiday weekend. My feet were killing me after 8 solid hours standing on them with no break all day. Pouring tastings is fun, but not so much when your back, legs and feet are screaming at you. That's what years of sit-down desk jobs will do to you. It's been many years since my days in a factory, which required standing for hours at a time. Sheesh! What a white collar wimp I've become!
Did I mention there's a new sushi bar in town? We did try it and were pleasantly surprised. It's equally priced with Ocean Sushi Deli but tiny and much less a dive. Ocean Sushi is OK as long as you keep your eyes on your food and ignore the floor, ceiling, cracked tables, etc. The new place was tasty and well presented. We'll go back soon. I'll probably go back even sooner.
Gong Hee Fat Choy! Happy New Year. For the Chinese, the new year begins with the first new moon of the year. There was a huge celebration in Honolulu, and a smaller but no less enthusiastic one in Hilo. It's the year of the golden boar, folks, so take heart. The Chinese believe it to be the luckiest of years. I hope they're right.While the year of the boar (pig) comes around every 12 years, the year of the golden boar happens only once every 60. So there you go. I happen to be a boar. Ha ha. Very funny. Your spelling is atrocious. And besides, you're reading this, aren't you? So who's the bore? Huh? Huh?
My neighbor's been doing plenny shooting lately. Maybe it's because it's the year of the pig. The pigs are running amok around the neighborhood, wreaking havoc in the yards of people who don't have barking dogs.
Speaking of pigs, up the road, some neighbors have had two black ones in a fenced area for some time. They captured them as adolescents. They've since grown and the other day I spotted five tiny babies! As the locals would say, "Da cute!" The parents are very protective, sheltering them from the wind and rain, coming to the fence to warn the dogs not to even think about sniffing their way. The Hawaiian word for pig is pua'a. So these little piglets are keiki pua'a.
Lucy is normally not deterred by bad weather. With all the rain, however, she is finding new fun indoors. Here she is, exploring the kitty food cupboard. As I write this, she is sitting on the desk, staring at my fingers as they tickle the plastic ivories.
That's all for now. A hui hou. Aloha.
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