Last Chance: Watermelon Salad

By Lori Powell

The last dog days of summer…humid, hot and in this case, very wet with rain. I start thinking of fall but then again I decided that we should wait just a bit more and savor the last of summer produce.

I’m not sure about you but in my neck of the woods it has been hotter than…. Standing in a sauna, but fully clothed and cooking. Makes me want to consume things that are laden with juice, such as the lovely watermelon, and that doesn’t require fire to eat. So many great things can be made with any of the varieties that you might find at your local farmers’ market, from yellow to red, from large to small, from salsas to cooling drinks.

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A Look at Special Fork’s New Office

By Sandy Hu

We’ve been laboring hard, getting Special Fork off the ground. And this summer, we renovated our old kitchen to make a real office for Special Fork.

Until then, we had two kitchens: our remodeled one where you see us doing food demos for Special Fork’s Video Fridays and our old kitchen, which was still functional. We removed the appliances, chipped out the wall tile and refinished the floor. It was an exciting process.

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What to Eat when Irene Comes Calling

By Lori Powell

While on vacation in Maine this year we had an unexpected and uninvited guest, “Irene.”

I have rented a house on the coast of Maine for many years now and just love it there for so many reasons – the food, the people, the gorgeous landscape, the lobsters and how peaceful it is…well every year but this one!

Irene arrived with bluster and some rain. But really, I can’t complain since the rain was minimal and considering what happened up at my house in the Hudson Valley (third worst flooding in the area’s history), this was just a lot of cool wet wind in my part of Maine.

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Too Many Tomatoes

By Lori Powell

Tomatoes are dropping in my garden…literally. My garden includes everything from heirloom varieties to the humble cherry. So, when burdened (gifted) with the luxury of gorgeous home-grown tomatoes, I say, let the salsas begin!

With infinite salsa variations possible, I change it up, given the offerings at the farmers’ market or what’s in my fridge. You could add beans, corn or grilled veggies, to name a few tasty options.

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Returning to My Roots: A Visit to a Living History Kona Coffee Farm

By Sandy Hu

Last week, I stepped back in time and into my childhood at The Kona Coffee Living History Farm in Captain Cook, Kona, on the Big Island of Hawaii. This living museum chronicles the life of immigrant Japanese coffee farmers from 1926 to 1945 through the original farmhouse and seven-acre coffee farm of the Uchida family. Their life mirrored that of my grandparents, Iwaki and Kitsu Honda, and their nine children.

While the farm is historically accurate to 1945, so much of that lifestyle continued well past it, to my own childhood, when, living in Hilo on the other side of the island, we would visit my grandparents, aunts and uncles, all coffee farmers at the time. As kids, we picked our share of coffee, too, during peak coffee season.

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