SFH Events

Past Events – 2011

• November 15
  Location:  Terra Madre Fundraiser. Allen’s at Huli Sue’s, Waimea, Hawaii
  Allen Hess was a 2010 Big Island delegate and came back inspired. He wanted to support our new delegates for 2012 by holding a “slow” dinner at his new restaurant. The dinner featured four courses with wine pairings. A portion of the proceeds was donated to Slow Food Hawaii.

• October 7
  Location:  Culinary Arts Program Luncheon, Kealakekua, Hawaii
  A five course, Indian cuisine luncheon featuring lamb, at the Culinary Arts Program at Hawaii Community College in Kealakekua.
• September 30
  Location:  Mealani’s Taste of the Hawaiian Range.
  Over 30 Hawai’i chefs prepare culinary “tastes” using 100 percent grass-fed beef, pork, lamb, goat, mutton and wild boar—plus fresh island fruit and vegetables. Attendees graze at culinary stations while visiting vendor booths to meet the farmers and ranchers who grow our food. Our volunteers at the Slow Food Hawaii booth invited attendees to join in our efforts.
• August 27
  Location:  Culinary & Garden Garage Sale, Waimea Homestead Farmers Market Waimea, Hawaii
  Members of Slow Food Hawaii organized and implemented the Culinary & Garden Garage Sale to support Mala’ai School Garden at Waimea Middle School.
• June 5
  Location:  Tour of the Mountain View Strawberry Farm, Hawaii
  Slow Food Hawaii tour and potluck at the commercial strawberry farm Mountain View Growers in Mountain View June 5th.
• April 29
  Location:  Culinary Arts Program Luncheon,Kealakekua, Hawaii
  A six course, gourmet, Slow Food Hawaii luncheon at the Culinary Arts Program at Hawaii Community College in Kealakekua. Students cooked and served a meal featuring local pork and ending with dessert using exotic fruit from the 12 Trees Project.
• January 30
  Location:  Slow Food Hawaii Annual Meeting and Potluck, Waikii Ranch.

Past Events – 2010

• December 12
  Location:  Slow Food Hawaii Christmas Potluck, Anna Ranch.
• October 25-29
  Location:  Terra Madre and Salone del Gusto, Torino, Italy.
  Slow Food Hawaii sponsored four delegates to attend Terra Madre 2010 in Torino, Italy – Dashiell Kuhr, Chef Allen Hess, Colehour Bondera, and Melanie Bondera. Terra Madre is an international conference that gathers sustainable food producers, farmers, cooks, educators and activists from around the world to connect and share their stories and traditions, as well as their innovative solutions for keeping small-scale agriculture and sustainable food production alive and well. Delegates come from over 150 countries. The Salone del Gusto – the world’s largest artisanal food marketplace – is held concurrently, in part for delegates to gain a deeper sense of how small-scale sustainable producers can market their products effectively. Also attending the events from Slow Food Hawaii were convivium leaders Clare Bobo and Shelby Floyd.
• October 3 - SFH All Local Food Potluck!  Anna Ranch, Waimea
• Slow Food Hawaii Eat Locally Grown Campaign
  September 25 – October 3, 2010
  Please see:
  • An Overview
  • Individual Events, Restaurant Offerings, & Additional Resources
  • Eat Local Week Food and Menu ideas
  • Also see North Kohala Eat Locally Grown
• August 28 and 29
  Location:  Across two streams in Waipio Valley
  Each year for the past several years, Alberta and Jayson Mock Chew and their family have hosted a campout in Waipio on their gorgeous property to help raise funds for SFH to send delegates to Terra Madre in Italy every two years.  They provide a delicious Hawaiian dinner Saturday night, and this year are going to have an imu!  The property is large, so there is plenty of space for camping under a special tree, or near a stream or the loi, off by yourself or with friends.  The brewmaster at Kona Brewing Co. is coming with beer, and we are ordering a wild boar for roasting.
• Wednesday, April 14 - Our president writes: “Yesterday 13 of us (including three Santa Cruz SF members) met for a Chinese-themed lunch at Bamboo Hale, the Hilo Community College’s culinary arts program restaurant. The food was tasty, but most importantly, we were showing our support for young chefs/cooks who will be preparing food in our restaurants in the future.  I spoke briefly to Alan Ogawa, who supervises the program, and hope that SFH can speak to the students in the future.”
• Friday, March 26, from 2:00 to 6:00 pm: A sustainable Fish Farmers Market on  at NELHA’s Gateway Center. ”Sponsored by the County, the fish market will feature a variety of eco-friendly aquaculture products grown at the Natural Energy Lab. Includes Keahole Lobster, Dungeness Crab, Kona Kampachi, Big Island Abalone, and sturgeon.”  Fresh whole seafood, as well as cut fillets and prepared sashimi plates. Other products produced at NELHA will also be featured, such as desalinated deep seawater, Kona Sea Salt, and algae products.
• Sunday, February 21, Noon, North Kohala Event: Slow Food Hawai’i Annual Meeting and Potluck. Meeting for members at 11 am, followed at noon by a lunch and open forum for members and nonmembers. Thanks to Edwin Goto, we had delicious veal burgers to go with the great food brought by our supporters.  Thanks to our hosts, Richard and Jileen Russell, more than 85 of us from around the island were able to enjoy the view of the spectacular North Kohala coast, and thanks to Kona Brewing Co. we sipped its new Oceanic Organic Saison beer and porter. The forum featured discussion of North Kohala’s food production. Place: Pu’u O Kumau Ranch
      

Past Events – 2009

• Sunday, December 13, from noon to 2 pm, our Christmas potluck at the teahouse at Anna Ranch in Waimea. We celebrated Terra Madre Day (officially Dec. 10) with Ken Love giving a short talk on food communities in India and Hawaii.
  
• September 18, Slow Food Hawaii was at the Taste of the Hawaiian Range at the Hilton Waikoloa.
• September 13, Sunday, long time Slow Food members Marian Solomon and Mike Renner hosted a potluck brunch and tour of their lovely grounds and coffee farm in Holualoa. We had a good turnout under beautiful skies for the coffee farm tour.  We had several members who came over from Hilo or Pahoa, the usual terrific food, music, and a tour of the very productive property. Shelby writes: One highlight for me was seeing Everett and Sandy Pang show Mike how to harvest and process fresh bamboo shoots from Mike’s beautiful golden bamboo stand.
• September 7, Monday, Slow Food’s Time for Lunch Campaign, schools across the USA had “Eat-Ins” that day on school campuses to bring awareness and attention to the need for real food into school lunches.
  At Waimea School on the Big Island, we had a great turnout.  See Andrea Dean’s blog with words and video from the event.
• September 4, we were at the Sustainability Fair at UH Hilo where we talked to a lot of east-siders who are into good, clean, fair food.  The fair was very well attended and is going to be an annual event.
• August 16, noon.  Potluck and farm tour at Ka’ohi Nani Farm in Waimea, a CSA and organic farm run by Lark Willey and her family. Lark and Steve spoke to us about CSAs and organic farming.  Along with the always impressively gourmet dishes from Slow Food members, we enjoyed a delicious taro-leek pancake using taro grown on their farm. There was fresh produce available for sale as well.
• June 6-7 - Waipi’o campout. A huge thank you to Alberta and Jayson Mock Chew for hosting Slow Food Hawaii at beautiful Mokuwai and providing all who attended a bountiful and delicious homemade Hawaiian dinner. They gave us an unforgettably wonderful experience at the campout and raised a whopping $3,400 for Terra Madre 2010!  Forty-one people attended the campout (three from Slow Food Oahu) learning about taro farming, lauhala weaving and harvesting coconuts. It was a terrific group, mellow and congenial, which made for a good time for all. The weather cooperated nicely — no rain — and the moon rose on schedule lighting up the night sky and silhouetting the valley. A hike to the beach on Sunday morning took us through a mystical forest of exotic plants and trees, passing houses surprisingly remote and tucked away that evoked another time.
  Devany’s blog: Waipi’o Valley: Taro and the Mock Chews
  VIDEO: Slow Food Hawaii and isolated Waipio Valley a good match
• May 9, Saturday, SFH sponsored another Culinary Garage Sale, to raise funds for Mala’ai.  Great buys – things like cookbooks, matates, chinoise(es), pots, pans, proofing baskets, crystal glasses, dishes, knife sets, etc. all donated.
• April 16 & 17th, Thursday and Friday, From Bean to Bar - Chocolate Candy making for the Home Processor & Food Lover.  AtKuaiwi Farm, Captain Cook.  Learn how to take the fermented, dried cacao bean through the six basic steps required to become chocolate candy. A two-morning course, with plenty of tasting, and a goodie bag of candy to take home.
• March 21, 2009 - Spring Equinox Work and Learn Day at Mala’ai
  Mala’ai extended a special invitation to Slow Food Hawaii members for a work and learn day at the garden to celebrate the official beginning of Spring. Details.
• March 1, 2009 - We could not have asked for a better setting or better food than we had Sunday for the annual meeting.  Holuakoa Cafe chef, Wilson Reed, fixed a lovely lunch of house made lavosh with fennel seeds, creamy organic pumpkin soup with pumpkin relish and a touch of olive oil, savory scallion scones with Hawaiian salt, fresh salad with balsamic dressing, and a spectacularly dense and delicious Meyer lemon cake with basil oil and pinenuts. (thanks, Clare, for working with the chef!) Then a short business meeting, time for conviviality.  At: Holuakoa Cafe, 76-5901 Mamalahoa Hwy Holualoa, HI
• January 31, 2009 At Hilo’s Lyman Museum, SFH members Joan Namkoong and Nan Pi’ianaia, both of whom have studied and written about Hawaii’s food traditions, gave a talk at SFH’s first Hilo potluck, after which there was a special tour of “Key Ingredients – Hawaii edition”, a traveling Smithsonian exhibit.   Nan spoke about food available to the Lymans when they arrived on the Big Island in the 1830′s.  Joan talked about the development of  iconic Hawaii flavors from our immigrant population.
• January 24, 2009 Saturday, 8:30 AM – 1 PM – A Mushroom Hunt
  with the Friends of Hawai`i Volcanoes National Park for a morning in coastal Casuarina groves at MacKenzie Beach Park with Don Hemmes, co-author of the authoritative identification guide, Mushrooms of Hawai`i.  See full event info.
• January 17, 2009 - 8 am to noon, SFH members Deb and Ben Discoe demonstrated how to humanely process chickens.  Members attending participated and learned about backyard chicken processing, and each took home a finished bird. There were 17 finished birds, nearly 3 years old – wet cook only, stewed or stock.  They were locally raised free-range on grass and organic feed their whole lives.
  For pictures and details, see the blog entry Processing Day

PAST EVENTS – 2008

On July 26, 2008, there was A Taste of Slow at Huli Sue’s restaurant in Waimea, with a tour of Fujifarm, the organic farm that Huli Sue’s owners Mark Vann and Lisa Smith own.  Highlights of the brunch menu for SFH locavores were the house made sausage from local grass fed beef, a taro and Big Island goat cheese casserole, ginger pancakes, Waimea tomato salad with Big Island feta, and lots of local fruit salad.  Highlights of the farm tour were some huffy chickens, tiny cherry tomatos gone wild, and the opportunity to buy fava beans (seldom seen in Hawaii markets) and fresh eggs.   No surprise – the event was sold out!