Tag: food

Don’t Touch the Cacao Trees

Adelle

Two tours were on the agenda today, both of them out of Lahaina. Which meant we had to plan for an hour’s drive each way for what should have been 45-minute drives due to construction — and not trusting Lady Sat Nav after Monday’s experience. This time we used the Google Maps app on my phone, and it got us to our first stop more than half an hour early.

That first stop was a chocolate-lover’s dream. And I think most of you know that chocolate lover is me. We took the Maui Chocolate Cacao Farm Tour at the Maui Ku’ia Estate. As their advertising says, our Guide Brittany educated us on the building and development of the estate, the cacao trees themselves, the harvesting of the pods, the processing of the beans, and finally a tasting of nine different pieces of chocolate. The estate grows 20 acres of cacao plants that they harvest from, but their #2 guy travels the world visiting cacao farms and brings back beans to process alongside their own beans at their factory in Maui. All of the cacao is ethically and environmentally sourced. What’s really interesting is that the cacao from each country or region has it’s own underlying flavour, dependent on the soil and other environmental factors that the trees are grown in. The flavours that they add to some of their chocolate is concentrated directly from the fruit. So everything is as natural as can be. It’s also rather remarkable that they have only two experienced harvesters to pull the pods from the trees when they’re ready.

We also learned that the chocolate factory is entirely powered through an array of solar panels installed on top of their parking structure, which we though was really interesting. And it turns out that all of the company’s profits are donated directly back into several community non-profit organizations. The owner of the company is a billionaire who doesn’t really need the money and is doing this work simply out of his own interest in it — and to keep from being bored in his retirement years. This was another really great tour that we had fun with, and we would recommend taking the time to experience.

From there we made our way to the beach near Whalers Village shopping mall to check in with Gemini Charters for our catamaran whale watching tour. Because I just know you’re all wondering: yes, I did remember to take Gravol before hand; yes, I still got a little queasy anyway; and no, I did not upchuck this time. Lots of steady breathing, sitting on the deck in the fresh air and breeze, and focusing on the horizon helped. But honestly, that was not remotely the focus of this wonderful excursion, so let’s move on, shall we?

Rather, the focus was on going out to see the humpbacked whales. We did not see George and Gracie, which is good because if we had then we’d also have to wonder, what kind of time warp did we go through??? We did see many other whales, though, all of them competing for the favours of a few females. We got really lucky in that we saw at least three competitive pods and at least three males actually leaping out of the water fairly close to our catamaran. And then to close the evening off, on the way back to the beach we saw a mama whale with her calf. We got a pretty great show, well worth the expense, and the captain and crew were top notch. Our tour did include a catered meal, but given my queasiness we thought it best not to partake. Which is really too bad because the menu looked amazing.

It didn’t take long once back on land for my stomach to settle down this time and instead it told me I was hungry, so we decided to stop for a bite at the mall. We took a chance that a table might be available at the Monkeypod restaurant — which is actually a really popular place — and for the second time that day got lucky. They had a table available right away for us. A margherita pizza, black cherry Shirley Temple, burger and fries with aioli sauce, and iced tea later, and we made our way back to the condo, sorting our prizes from the day, writing stories, and generally relaxing.

Aloha ahiahi!

Adelle and Dan

Hemingway’s Been Busy

Adelle

Today’s adventures took us into the Upcountry area of Maui, about half way up Haleakala. Once you get past the landfill (that Lady Sat Nav chose to take us past), the drive was easy going. And then out of nowhere this beautiful farm bursts forth to take your breath away. Or at least it took mine away. It was clear that at some time in the past someone with some money lived on that road because now it has grown into this iconic Hawaiian approach to an estate. The road was well maintained and planned. It was lined with huge, evenly spaced, old-growth coconut trees, and had a view to die for. It’s the type of area that Dan noted seems like a character like Jonathan Higgins (Magnum P.I.) would caretake.

This approach led us to the Surfing Goat Dairy Farm, which is a 40-acre-plus property that does exactly what it sounds like: raises goats and processes their milk into various products. The farm itself is very well laid out and taken care of, with various pens for goats at different stages of their life, a mechanical milking shed, a barn, a dairy processing building, a future truffle making building, a gazebo and sheltered deck attached to the gift shop and kitchen.

The goats are freaking adorable. The tour guide introduced us to a new born goat before taking us around to meet their primary buck Hemingway and part of his harem. Apparently Hemingway really got into his job last year because they now have far more kidds on the way than they usually do.

The tour guide (and again, I apologize, but I’ve forgotten her name — I’m a terrible person that way) showed us how the milking machine works and the kitchen where the milk is pasturized and processed into cheese, where the cheesemaker gave us samples of plain cream cheese and a flavoured cream cheese that they named Canada — wootwoot! Both were fantastic. Canada was flavoured with cranberries, cinnamon, and honey. Oh, my God, I cannot even describe how tasty it was! So good.

At the end of the tour we sat down to a sampler cheese platter, where they gave us a bag of assorted crackers and six samples of their cheeses: I totally forget the names, but there was balls of cheese with garlic infused olive oil; feta; balls of cheese with another kind of oil that I can’t remember the seasonings; sundried tomato cream cheese; pepper cream cheese; and lilikoi cream cheese. All of them were delicious, but I think our favourite savoury were the pepper cream cheese and the sundried tomato cream cheese, but the lilikoi was soooo yummy in a dessert kind of way.

Needless to say we ended up purchasing way more from the gift shop here than we have anywhere else yet, including: three kinds of cream cheese, a box of truffles, lilikoi butter, a t-shirt, and a cooler because we needed to get the cream cheeses safely home and we weren’t even through half of our day. We expect to snack on the cheese and crackers throughout our stay, so don’t ask us to try any when we get home because we don’t expect to have any left.

Next on our itinerary, we made our way on another scenic drive to the town of Makawao. Our goal here was specifically to see the Hot Island Glass store, but we had trouble finding parking and ended up taking a rather pleasant walk down an old-timey type street of stores to get to the glass maker. If we’d had more time before our next stop we likely would have browsed some more. Unfortunately, glass was not actively being made when we got to the store, but their products were wonderful and we did take a couple of items away with us.

We booked our way down to what was supposed to be the highlight of the day, and despite being overshadowed by the Surfing Goat Dairy, it did hold up to expectations. We had a wonderful tour of the Maui Pineapple Farm, which grows sweet, sweet pineapples branded as Maui Gold. And oh, lord, are they ever gold! These pineapples are the BEST, and no we do not expect that either of the two pineapples we received as part of the tour will make it to the end of the week to bring home with us. The tour guide, Keilan, was a delight and showed us around the grounds and through the processing plant.

Did you know that not only are pineapples not grown in trees (they grow low to the ground in kind of bushes) but that they are also not citrus? That’s right, they are actually a bunch of berries. The berries coalesce at the crown of the fruiting stem. Each of the pointy nibs that encircle the pineapple is what’s left of the flowers that produce the berries. The pineapples that this farm produces are far sweeter than those that we get in North America because the ones we get are actually not yet ripe. The ones we get are shipped from various Asian and South American countries, so in order to lengthen their shelf life they are picked earlier than they should be. Pineapples do not keep ripening after they’ve been picked, the way bananas do, so those pineapples haven’t had time for the sugars to trade places with the acids. Because the Maui Gold pineapples are allowed to ripen before they’re harvested, they are a much sweeter fruit with a much smaller core that you can eat entirely and that doesn’t have as many of the enzymes that make your tongue tingle the way other pineapples do. Maui Gold pineapples are not sold anywhere in the world but in the Hawaiian Islands chain, so you’re just going to have to travel to Maui and take the tour. Although, they do take on-line orders and will ship the pineapples anywhere in North America, so I guess you could do that… and you can get a subscription to receive them as frequently as once per week.

We kind of winged it after that. We thought we’d try and get a table at Mama’s Fish House, but, yeah, that didn’t work. then we drove down the coast a little bit and walked around Ho’okipa Beach Park and watched the surf — and some surfers — from the cliff before taking a rather slippery (not sure that’s the right word) walk on the beach down below. I say slippery because the sand grains were round and tended to roll as you sunk into it. Dan says the engineering term is uniformly graded, meaning the grains were all the same size. It was kind of weird, but fun to walk on. Or should I say try to walk on.

Anyway, we thought we’d try to go to Paia Fish Market, but when we passed it there was a line forming, it was on the other side of the road, and it was rush hour so we couldn’t find a way to turn around for the extremely long line of cars in the oncoming lane. So instead we returned to the condo, dropped off our stuff, and ended up by random chance at The Shops at Wailea where we went for supper at Tommy Bahamas. Their tables were full, but there was room at the bar, so we ate there. The bar servers were great! The bartender didn’t intend to, but he put on an amazing show for us as we watched him keeping up with the drink orders. He was really moving. The food was pretty good, too.

We had thought to go for a walk on the Wailea Beach Path, but that will have to wait for another time. We also thought to wander around the condo property to try and get to the public beach, but I forgot the code to get through the gate, so I guess that will have to wait for another time, too.

Now we’re back at the condo, munching on pineapple pieces and shortbread cookies.

Aloha po!

Adelle and Dan