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Garden Island Range & Food Festival

Island Breeze made with rambutan at Kalapaki Joe’s Lihue. Daniel Lane photo

Last Sunday, the Garden Island Range & Food Festival showcased locally grown and made food. As the farm chair, I wrote about sourcing produce for the hyper-local event last week. About 350 visitors and residents showed up and ate food that 13 farmers, 5 ranchers and Kauai Shrimp donated, and 14 restaurants cooked. Kauai Coffee was there as well as The Right Slice and Lappert’s Hawaii. Salty Wahine Hawaiian Gourmet Sea Salts were uses in some of the dishes and they donated blends for the chef’s gift bags. Aunty Lilikoi also donated variety packs for the chef’s gift bags.

Students from the Culinary Arts program at the Kauai Community College received first hand education by top chefs by helping them prepare. Two students won $1,000 scholarships and got their picture taken with the mayor. We had a display table filled with local fruit, vegetables, orchids from Orchid Alley Kauai and meat from A`akukui Ranch that we auctioned off and procees are going to the Kauai Food Bank just in time for Christmas.

It was a Zero Waste event. All the participating chefs provided biodegradable plates, forks and cups, and kids from 4H made sure guests put their trash in the proper receptacles.

“All the recyclable waste is in a pile mixed with wood chips and fungal spores,” says Joseph Dunsmoor of Zero Waste Kauai. “I am doing an experiment on how well a fungal cold compost will break down the material, especially the forks and spoons. It will all break down to arthropod manure before next year and I will share the results.” Continue Reading →