aloha for now

The beauty of all-encompassing stillness.
A dogged hunt for that one mosquito that got in the house. 
Tasting a new fruit I didn’t know existed: every. single. day.
Feeling psychologically stripped-down (in a good way).
Waking up to real live rooster-song.
The creamiest avocados – all you can eat, all day every day.

These are just a few of the things I’ve experienced in the last week since I stepped foot on the 5-acre Hawaiian farm I’m calling home for the next three months. 

Let’s step back for a second. In my previous two posts, I wrote about how I got into food and the goals of my blog. Since then I’ve been on hiatus, and I still haven’t posted any recipes… I know – LAME!

The truth is, a few things have been holding me back:
a. I don’t have a crystal clear direction for what I want this blog to be.
b. Posting my writing publicly is scary (!) and
c. Writing recipes is harder than I thought because I never measure anything - oops!

But I'm moving past all of these. I know that I need to write about food, and I really want to share the food I make and inspire people to build confidence in the kitchen. I know I need to just do it. So I commit to doing it. Regularly. For the next three months (and hopefully well beyond).

Ok - I’m sure you’re wondering how I ended up on a farm in Hawaii. Since those initial blog posts back in June, I quit my food job in favor of the freedom to very intentionally figure out my next food/career move. I’m 90% sure I don’t want to be a chef, but I knew that I wanted to try being “closer” to food to determine whether I’d like to be some kind of artisan, farmer, or other food producer. At the very least, I knew that I wanted to experience firsthand what it’s like to work at growing food every day – for my love of food and new knowledge if nothing else.

Being single and 27 with a big case of the travel bug, I thought I should have some adventure before anything else. Hawaii was at the top of my travel list and working on a farm was at the top of my food to-do list, so marrying the two seemed like a perfect, intentional adventure. To top it off – Hawaii is the only place in the United States that grows coffee – my one true love. A little research, two emails and a phone call later, and I was accepted as an intern at the Big Island coffee farm I’m on now. The deal is – I work 30 hours a week in exchange for housing and food. I’m at an all-organic farm that grows mainly coffee and macadamia nuts to sell, as well as cacao for chocolate, and a variety of tropical fruits that get processed into jellies, jams, dried fruit and fruit leathers. Naturally, a variety of vegetables, herbs and bountiful tropical fruits are grown for our own consumption. Oh - and there are some wild chickens that occasionally leave eggs, though I’m still waiting to find one.

When I arrived last Wednesday, aside from the sheer disbelief that I was actually doing this, I was first overcome by the peaceful stillness of the farm, especially at night. We’re in a pretty remote area about 30 minutes south of Kona, at 2,000 ft elevation. The only “neighbor” sounds I’ve heard are an occasional dog bark or lawnmower. Otherwise, it’s just the crickets, birds, rain, and rustle of the wind.

Now that I’ve been here for a week, I’m realizing how utterly ideal this situation is for me at this moment in my life. For the next three months I'm embracing a simple lifestyle on the farm. From 7:30am - 1:30pm I get to work with my body (weeding, picking coffee, harvesting fruit, planting seeds, making jam, etc) and mind (trying to absorb as much information as possible from farmer & owner Una, with some food policy discussions sprinkled in among my unending questions).  And then from 1:30pm on I’m free to read, write, cook, and reflect. It’s like a food lover’s learning & writing retreat. I couldn’t be more excited and I hope you’ll follow along with me to see how this adventure unfolds!

Other than here on the blog, you can find me on my Instagram (@garlicpressjess) and SnapChat: (jslioon/garlic press jess) for the daily dirt. More on Hawaii later, and get excited for at least two recipes coming within a week. Promise!

yeah, it's pretty great here

the mission of this blog: little victories

As far as people stereotypes go, I’m your classic over-achiever, oldest child perfectionist. I like to follow the rules. I’m a people pleaser. I do like to color outside the lines, though I tend to get permission first.

But in the kitchen … I’m the opposite. I rarely use recipes, let alone follow them strictly. I buy what tickles my fancy, and I figure out what to do with it later. I take lots of risks, and mostly I experiment. Granted, I understand the basics, and I’ve practiced a lot, which means my experiments usually turn out ok (though I've had my fair share of failures). Bottom line: I'm confident when I'm in the kitchen.

After letting a number of ideas for this food blog marinate, I’ve landed on this mission: I want to help you build confidence in the kitchen. I want to inspire you to experiment. I want to help you learn how to think about cooking and be able to use your creativity and preferences to come up with new and delicious things you can create and be proud of. 

Cooking is one of the few remaining outlets where you get to make something with your hands, and not just anything, but something you NEED! Sustenance! After long days spent at the computer, there’s nothing like SMASHING your garlic clove with the side of your chef’s knife, and doing it not just because you want to smash something but because that smashing has a purpose. Plus, as Michael Pollan says (and I firmly believe) - if everyone cooked more, we would all be a lot healthier. Because if you had to make french fries, chips, or donuts every time you wanted to eat them, you'd eat them MAYBE once a year.

So, how do you build self-confidence in something? I’ve thought about this question a lot, and I believe it's all about the little victories: trying one small thing, seeing yourself succeed, and repeating until all those little somethings turn into a big something: Confidence!

PS. Little Victories is the title of a GREAT song by Matt Nathanson, which I will leave you with…

“This time, I’ll be sailin’
No more bailin’ boats for me
I’ll be out here on the sea
Just my confidence and me…

I’ll be awful sometimes
Weakened to my knees
But I’ll learn to get by
On the little victories”

— Matt Nathanson

Listen to it here.

the soup story - how I got into food

Hi! I’m Jess. Welcome to my new food blog! I am SO EXCITED that you are actually reading this (assuming that you are). I’ve been thinking about starting this blog for the past three years, ever since I realized that I love food SO much that I needed to make it part of my career. For my first post, I thought I'd share the story of how that happened:

It was November of 2011. I was living in Washington, DC, and had recently quit my event planning job because my dad needed help with his alternative healthcare startup. My dad plays the "Santa Claus" type role when it comes to parenting. (When I was two and my mom went away for the weekend, my dad took me to Toys R Us, put me in the shopping cart, and let me fill it up with everything I wanted.) With dad as my boss, I had a good amount of free time. And I soon realized I filled that time with the thing I most loved to do: cooking.

On that chilly November morning in the nation’s capital, I woke up to a text from my then-boyfriend that he was sick. Though I was disheartened to hear this, I was excited at the chance to show my care for him by making some homemade chicken soup. At the time of this story, I happened to have a broken foot, so I was getting around on a “peg leg” I had rented from a website expertly named goodbyecrutches.com. I looked like a complete fool/pirate, but it was so much better than crutches. 

My soup-making quest for the day began. I peg-legged my way 9 blocks to Whole Foods, got all my ingredients, and peg legged my pirate-self and all my groceries back home. I decided I should make one “traditional” pot of soup and one “experimental” pot to which I added lemongrass, mushrooms, and some other exotic flavors. By the time I had cleaned up and put away two pots of soup, it was late in the evening. The soup tasted great and would taste even better after a night of flavor-marrying in the fridge. I couldn’t wait to serve some to the boyfriend the next day as a sign of my love and cooking skills. But as I got into bed I had a realization… "WOW. I just spent THAT ENTIRE DAY making SOUP. Literally: 8am-10pm, all I did was make soup." 

And the next morning, I decided I needed to make food part of my career and started looking up companies where I might make that a reality. I wanted to work to change eating habits in America, and to have the most impact, I wanted to start with kids' eating habits, ideally in schools. For almost three years now, I've been working at an awesome company that makes healthy meals for schools.

Working in food, just like cooking, is very hard work. But both are rewarding, and ultimately, so worth it. Just like that soup.

Update: In August 2015, after 3 incredibly impactful years, I left Revolution Food to pursue my own ventures. See subsequent blog posts for details!