Plate lunch

This is another food post with a cultural angle. The plate lunch is a thing here. Those establishments offering this option advertise it as such. The cultural association with the plate lunch taps into Kauai's multicultural background. As I understand the origin, field workers used to bring food to their work site and at lunch time share with each other. We midwesterners might describe this as pot luck. The mix of backgrounds present in the fields led to some very interesting food combinations. Foodies might describe this as fusion. At least this how I as a nonfoodie and a midwesterner would attempt to explain the phenomenon. I see that a bento box is an alternate description, but bento box has a different meaning to me.

I am not certain if the quality of the food is a cultural thing, but a couple might try ordering one plate and maybe an app until they have visited a given establishment a few times. Our experience was with a plate lunch forward establishment called Bobbie's. You can find lists of best plate lunch eateries online and Bobbies was #2.

My plate is at the bottom of the photo - rice, fried seimen, beef, chicken, mushrooms. Everything seems to have been marinated or sauced.

Kauai Coffee

We returned to Kauai Coffee to take their tour. You pay for this one, but they take you into the fields to see the massive operation.

This massive farm has 4 million coffee trees and harvests from 3 million each year. The farm is on the dry side of the island, but canals bring water from the mountains where it rains more than 400 inches per year. This water is filtered by running the water through sand filters and then sent out to the plants using drip irrigation. Thin plastic tubing run down each row. The final photo is of the recycling effort which generates compost. The trees would grow tall without constant pruning necessary to refresh the plant for more active growth and to keep the trees to a height suited for mechanical picking. Green matter and the residue from the harvest are composted.

Probably the thing I learned this year that disputed an existing view was that all coffee cherries were red. The most common variety on this farm is a yellow variety.

We finished the outing by planting some coffee beans - Blue Mountain. It takes at least 5 years to get these new plants to the point they will produce. 

Allerton Gardens

Kauai is not that large so we find ourselves visiting some of the same attractions we visited during a previous visit again. This is the case with Allerton Gardens. What struck me about our visit this year was the very different impression I got from previous visits. I decided the different perspectives resulted from the interest and focus of our tour guides. I remember a previous visit having a more botanical focus even to the point of walking through a greenhouse focused on the newest mission of the gardens as preserving tropical plants. This year was more focused on the story of the Allertons.

The Allertons had immense wealth with one being the son of a Chicago stockyards baron. The son never worked and spent a great deal of time traveling and in Hawaii. The son was gay and had as his partner a younger man that he adopted to allow for the passing on of his estate. The garden was created as an outdoor living space (their traditional home was far more modest) consisting of "rooms" the couple would use for entertaining and living their lives. Meals were enjoyed outdoors. You have to imagine the rooms shown in the following photos containing furniture and used for banquets, dancing, etc.

The rooms were planned very carefully and the trust that sustains the gardens is based on precise instructions for what is to be grown where. Hurricanes have done severe damage to the rooms and these instructions were followed carefully in the regeneration of the desired plantings.

Cone guys

Kauai is pretty much round. A road runs around much of the island except one stretch where the terrain does not allow. Side roads branch off from this ring road, but again cannot link across the island because of the mountainous terrain in the middle.

I think I mentioned in a previous post that they use an unusual approach to adjust what can be a heavy flow of traffic to and from Lihue (home of Costco). I finally was in the right place at the right time yesterday to get a photo. The road is three lanes moving towards Lihue. I mean a total of three lanes and not three lanes in one direction. After the morning rush and by rush I mean the number of vehicles and not the speed at which this traffic flows (max 40 for much of the trip), these cone guys go out an pick up these cones that signal they side of the road marked for two-lane traffic is now one lane and the second lane has been assigned to the other direction. There are multiple trucks in this convoy. The trucks in the back signal to traffic to be cautious and then move up when the truck in the front is loaded. Evidently some time in the early morning, this cones must be put down again. Five days a week. Steady work and I guess a cost effective solution.

Hibiscus

We have spent little time visiting tropical locations so I can't compare Kauai to other locations that are warm, fertile, and wet. The thing I find so impressive about this place is the weight and diversity of the biomass. Green vegetations everywhere. This is not the monoculture fields of agricultural areas and not the heavy timber growth of the area we spend so much time at in Northern Wisconsin. This is green growing on green with so much natural vegetation, variety and flowering species.

I frequently walk to or from a coffee shop I like to inhabit to read and write. It is a little over two miles away from the condo we stay in. With the exception of the golf courses that line part of this road, much of the rest of the hike is through areas lined with hedges of hibiscus. I don't know where the hibiscus can be grown and I understand these lengths of hibiscus plants were planted and are carefully maintained. The percentage of plant covered with flowers has been increasing in the last couple of weeks and the variety of the huge blooms has to attract your attention.