Friday, March 13, 2009
Kale Stalks and Collard Stalks...
...are the new carrot stick. I brought a ton of these home from work and have been snacking on them a lot this week. Excellent. Simple. Very healthy. Very overpriced at the grocery store (the whole leaf that is). Also planning on making some stir fry out of it. Other finds include: mushroom water (yes, i finally safely made it home with intact gourmet mushroom water), papaya peels and seeds, won bok outer leaves, and mint stalks. Planning on making a nice mushroom rice dish with the water, grinding up the peels and concocting a face mask out of them which I will try and freeze so that it will keep longer, drying out the seeds for later planting and use(dried papaya seeds grow just great btw), and stuffed wonbok? I've also been thinking that the next thing I want to do is to begin making vegetable prints using interesting transecting cuts of the veggies I bring home. Such great geometrical patterns in so many veggies. Onions, lettuce, Won Bok, pineapple peel, green onion roots, avocado peels, and coconut husks all come to mind. Also, I looked up the uses of strawberry leaves as a tea and medicinal, here are some of it's uses.
The Kohala Center and Thoughts About Hawaiian Ingenuity
In this week's Honolulu Weekly, there's an article about The Kohala Center on Big Island. It talks about how the community on Big Island began to meet and have a community conversation about what they wanted to improve and change in their community. From these discussions the idea came that by focusing on the island as an educational resource (wait, stop--the entire island--as an educational resource), the island could improve youth education, skilled employment at better pay for locals, and economic diversity. All this without becoming a tourist mecca or industrial wasteland. In it's geological rarity, locational uniqueness, geographic isolation, and in it's path towards sustainability and self sufficiency, Big Island is made for research modeling. The amazing part of this intuitive leap of thought is that, in order to continue to be an intellectual commodity, the island must continue to bushwack an interesting and promising path through all of its inherent challenges. Its value as a model is enhanced by the community's ability to create and manifest its own ideals in an ecologically wise way. I absolutely love this.
Furthermore, here's a gem of a quote for Garbage Craft from Matthews Hamabata, the director of The Kohala Center, as quoted from a Honolulu Weekly article entitled, "Kohala Nui--Education, environment, and empowerment on the Big Island": "Wouldn't it be great if we didn't see waste as waste but rather as an input for the agricultural system or our build environment? Outputs of one industry could be the inputs of another. We would maximize efficiency for greater energy and food self-reliance, capture dollars, and keep them on the island and create jobs."
I have thought a lot about this subject, especially lately, as I do this blog. One thing that I envision is to make regular calls to yellow pages buisnesses and investigate what their garbage is like, whether it's something they are willing to part with (or if there are legal barriers, protocol barriers, or govt regulations preventing this sort of thing for specific buisnesses), and what could be creatively done with such products. A next step i see would be to have several standard garbage craft projects figured out. A third step would be to begin interacting with the community on a volunteer basis.
Two ways I picture doing this are 1) in schools, as a recycling education program/craft class and 2) working with poor populations--for instance, temporary housing communities, poverty safety-net programs. In the latter I could do something like startup a workers co-opt in the same way a program like Food Not Bombs is organized. The workers would form a company, they would figure out the interests they had and the kind of crafts they wanted to make, and then they would investigate a cast-offs based supply chain for getting these items. If it needed more structure than this, it might be possible to mentor for a series of craft classes/brainstorming sessions where we worked with certain goods and tried to think of useful creative applications.
Just going to the yellow pages from A-the very beginning of D, I see, and can get creatively excited about the potential refuse of: abrasives companies, acousticals, airbrush, air conditioners, aircraft equipt/ground support/rebuilding, welding and metal works, tailoring, dry cleaners, animal hospitals, appliance repair, aquarium supply stores, artificial limbs/eyes, bishop museum, auto repair, auto detail, bakeries, baloons, bamboo products, barbers, barrels and drums, bars, bathroom remodelijng, beauty salon, bicycle repair, billiard equiptment, binderies, blinds, boat repair, boilers, bowling, breweries, bridal shop, building supply, butcher, buttons, cakes, caligraphers, car wash, carnival equiptment, carpet llayer, ceiling cleaning, cement, ceramics, chairs and tables, chemist, child care, china and glassware, cigar dealer, clock repair, cctv,clowns,painters, coffee, compost, computer parts, concrete blocks, contact lenses, roofing, tree service, propane, copiers, cosmetics, costumes, countertops, country clubs, cruiseships, curtains, cushions, crystals, cutlery, dairy...and so on. I mean, what could I do with: castoff sandpaper or wire bristle brushes, leftover paint, metal ducts, spent airfilters, dog hair, broken stoves, aquarium glass and so on? A lot I imagine.
Kids could think of tons of things I'm sure. It would be like their favorite art class ever. Adults might take hints from the kids, or they might be given categories to think about and elaborate on...like garbage gardening, scrap welding, tinker tin work, glass art/craft, weaving, box making, rug making, shed building, garden ornament building, furniture repair/overhaul/crafting, mosaic making, composting, sign painting, dying, computer tech work, carving, etc. This is what I'm interested in. Kudos to Matthews Hamabata and his Center, for being of a like mindset. I am inspired by what Hawaii has the potential to become.
Furthermore, here's a gem of a quote for Garbage Craft from Matthews Hamabata, the director of The Kohala Center, as quoted from a Honolulu Weekly article entitled, "Kohala Nui--Education, environment, and empowerment on the Big Island": "Wouldn't it be great if we didn't see waste as waste but rather as an input for the agricultural system or our build environment? Outputs of one industry could be the inputs of another. We would maximize efficiency for greater energy and food self-reliance, capture dollars, and keep them on the island and create jobs."
I have thought a lot about this subject, especially lately, as I do this blog. One thing that I envision is to make regular calls to yellow pages buisnesses and investigate what their garbage is like, whether it's something they are willing to part with (or if there are legal barriers, protocol barriers, or govt regulations preventing this sort of thing for specific buisnesses), and what could be creatively done with such products. A next step i see would be to have several standard garbage craft projects figured out. A third step would be to begin interacting with the community on a volunteer basis.
Two ways I picture doing this are 1) in schools, as a recycling education program/craft class and 2) working with poor populations--for instance, temporary housing communities, poverty safety-net programs. In the latter I could do something like startup a workers co-opt in the same way a program like Food Not Bombs is organized. The workers would form a company, they would figure out the interests they had and the kind of crafts they wanted to make, and then they would investigate a cast-offs based supply chain for getting these items. If it needed more structure than this, it might be possible to mentor for a series of craft classes/brainstorming sessions where we worked with certain goods and tried to think of useful creative applications.
Just going to the yellow pages from A-the very beginning of D, I see, and can get creatively excited about the potential refuse of: abrasives companies, acousticals, airbrush, air conditioners, aircraft equipt/ground support/rebuilding, welding and metal works, tailoring, dry cleaners, animal hospitals, appliance repair, aquarium supply stores, artificial limbs/eyes, bishop museum, auto repair, auto detail, bakeries, baloons, bamboo products, barbers, barrels and drums, bars, bathroom remodelijng, beauty salon, bicycle repair, billiard equiptment, binderies, blinds, boat repair, boilers, bowling, breweries, bridal shop, building supply, butcher, buttons, cakes, caligraphers, car wash, carnival equiptment, carpet llayer, ceiling cleaning, cement, ceramics, chairs and tables, chemist, child care, china and glassware, cigar dealer, clock repair, cctv,clowns,painters, coffee, compost, computer parts, concrete blocks, contact lenses, roofing, tree service, propane, copiers, cosmetics, costumes, countertops, country clubs, cruiseships, curtains, cushions, crystals, cutlery, dairy...and so on. I mean, what could I do with: castoff sandpaper or wire bristle brushes, leftover paint, metal ducts, spent airfilters, dog hair, broken stoves, aquarium glass and so on? A lot I imagine.
Kids could think of tons of things I'm sure. It would be like their favorite art class ever. Adults might take hints from the kids, or they might be given categories to think about and elaborate on...like garbage gardening, scrap welding, tinker tin work, glass art/craft, weaving, box making, rug making, shed building, garden ornament building, furniture repair/overhaul/crafting, mosaic making, composting, sign painting, dying, computer tech work, carving, etc. This is what I'm interested in. Kudos to Matthews Hamabata and his Center, for being of a like mindset. I am inspired by what Hawaii has the potential to become.
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