Another Fermentation & Pickling Class

I helped with another Fermentation & Pickling Class that was sponsored by the Kohala ʻOno Food Hui. Sandra was again leading the class, with assistance from Kathy, Michelle, & me. We made the same things we made 2 weeks ago: sweet cucumber pickles, mak kim chee, & sauerkraut. But this time we used what we learned from the 1st class & were able to get out much quicker.

Marian fills her jar with mak kim chee.

My Team - (L to R) Marian, Vanessa, & Delilah filling jars with mak kim chee.

(L to R) Bill, Marian, Vanessa, & Delilah massage cabbage to make sauerkraut.

Most of the class with most of what we made.

After the previous class I had asked Sandra if she had any shiso starts or seeds or knew where I could get some. She did not. But Michelle did! She said it grew like a weed at her place! She brought me 2 small plants today; they are the red variety. As soon as I got home I planted them in the raised planter; I hope they do well there.

Foreground: ʻuala; back right corner: shiso.

The ʻuala in the front of the photo has a purple skin with purple flesh. The leaves & stems have more purple in them than the Okinawan sweet potato which has purple flesh but a beige-colored skin. I think I have the Stokes variety of purple sweet potato. I add the leaves to my smoothies for more fiber; I like that they have a higher anthocyanin content from the purple pigment in the leaves than other ʻuala varieties.

I checked on the kalo this afternoon after I planted the shiso. They are all doing well. But I need to get out there & weed out all the grass. And I also need to move the Palehua so it is easier to tell them apart from their neighbors when they start crowding each other. Right now the planting order of the varieties from the inflow to the end of the trench is: ʻEleʻele, Palehua, Moi, & Bun Long. Both ʻEleʻele & Palehua have purplish coloring on the stems; Moi & Bun Long do not. I want to change the order to ʻEleʻele, Moi, Palehu, & Bun Long so I can tell them apart easier. 

 

The Mandarin lessons on Duolingo have 2 additional lesson types that ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi does not; one is a listening exercise & the other is a speaking exercise. I'm guessing the speaking exercise is so that you pronounce those 5 vowel types correctly! Here's what the listening exercise looks like.

Tropical Storm Amanda has been downgraded to a tropical depression. It has maximum sustained winds of 35 miles per hour. It is moving southwesterly at about 3 mph. 

Episode 49 of the eruption of Kīlauea  is likely to take another 7 to 13 days.

Hauʻoli lā Hānau e Kip, Marcia, Gloria, & Peter!

 

 

IASA #4-17

Helped crack macadamia nuts for Kohala Jodo Mission fund raiser.

 

IASA #4-16

Had lunch with Jen & Susan at Waimea Butcher Shop.

 

What Was That?

As I was watching Love of Nirvana this evening, the table started shaking as if Moʻo was sitting on it & scratching herself. I quickly looked over at the clock; it was 9:46 pm. Why did I look at the clock? I knew from the feel & proximity, it was not Moʻo. It was an earthquake! Since I had my headphones on to listen to Love of Nirvana, I did not hear the low rumble that frequently precedes the shaking; living on Moku o Keawe you kinda get used to the occasional shake & signs that its on its way. It lasted about 10 seconds.

In that period of time, I was able to easily walk to the cat gate to check on how the cats & Moʻo were handling the shaking. I think this is the largest earthquake they have experienced, the other 2 or 3 were much milder & shorter. I could see the cats were trying to figure out, Is this a very large person approaching us? From the cat gate I could not see Moʻo lying by the front door; after the shaking stopped she came over & just stood in front of the gate, facing away & looking towards the front door as if guarding us from whomever this very large person was. Nothing got knocked off of the shelves, there was no damage to the house; just a little excitement for a few seconds!

Location of the epicenter.

Data submitted by citizen scientists. One of those blue boxes at north end is me.

About 15 minutes later, they all calmed down & resumed their usual night time napping. I gathered screen shots & other info to put this together for you. Later I returned to my usual night time Chinese TV series rabbit hole. 🙄

Screen shot from Love of Nirvana.

The window for the next episode of the eruption at Kīlauea has now been adjusted to be between the 24th & the 27th.

IASA #4-15

Made (L-R) sweet pickled cucumbers, sauerkraut, & mak kimchee in pickling & fermentation class.

Fermentation & Pickling Class

Today I helped with the fermentation & pickling workshop hosted by the Kohala Ono Food Hui. We made sweet cucumber pickles, mak kim chee, & sauerkraut. Sandra was the main workshop leader with Michele & I assisting.  

Sandra leads class in reading info on fermentation & pickling.

Sandra demonstrates testing pH of sauerkraut she made a month ago.

Chopped won bok being brined in gray tubs.

Students & instructors.

The final products.

I started rewatching The Imperial Coroner this evening; this is the one that got me started down the rabbit hole. The things that got me interested in this series was the diagrams of the coroners report & how Chu Chu the coroner & Commandery Prince An role play the attack on the victim to try to figure out what happened.

Chu Chu inspects corpse & identifies what she has found.

Commandery Prince An plays role of murderer while Chu Chu acts as victim.

The Hanzi is interspersed with the regular listening portions of the Mandarin lessons on Duolingo. Here is the Hanzi for the words "this is". In this exercise they are showing the stroke order for the 2nd component of the phrase. One thing I have noticed is that the Mandarin word order is like English word order, not like ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi where the order is reversed for when using adjectives. 

Episode 48 of the eruption of Kīlauea is currently forecast to begin some time between the 24th & the 26th.

Hauʻoli lā Hānau e Clancy!

To Be Fair to Tantai Jin

In my last post I was a little unfair to Tantai Jin, the male protagonist in Till the End of the Moon. SPOILER ALERT - It is only when the female protagonist Ye Xiwu is about to die that he learns that he is the Demon Fetus, prior to that he thinks he is just a mere human with some cultivation skills. 

Ye Xiwu knew he was the Demon Fetus because she is an Immortal who was sent back from 500 years in the future to kill him & stop him from becoming the Devil Lord who is annihilating the Immortal Realm & the Human Realm during her actual time period & who is so powerful that he is unstoppable. 

Before she is sent back in time, however, she learns that there is an evil bone embedded somewhere in Tantai Jin's body & she must find it & remove it before she kills him or he will automatically become the Devil Lord & annihilate the world even earlier! Unfortunately, Ye Xiwu is not told how to remove the evil bone or where it is located; she must figure that out herself. (If she knew, it would be a very short series.)

When she lands in that earlier time, she discovers that Tantai Jin is just a human who is being mercilessly bullied because he is a 20-something who has been a hostage prince since he was 6 years old. Oh, yeah, & she is also married to him! Although she is trying to kill him, she also protects him to prevent him from being killed before she can remove the evil bone. Talk about a complicated relationship!

Some of Tantai Jin's behaviors seem to me to be on the autism spectrum. The main one being that he cannot feel human emotions, supposedly because of the evil bone. But to try to make people like him, he imitates a young prince that he admires & who was his only friend. I know this is a behavior of people with autism because Kai told me that when he was younger he did not have a clue how to act in new situations so he would imitate the people around him. I told him it was a good thing none of his friends were psychopaths or sociopaths!

Speaking of psychopaths, Ye Xiwu initially wonders whether Tantai Jin is a psychopath because of the lack of emotion. After a while, however, she leans towards believing since he was bullied if she is nice to him she can prevent him from becoming the Devil Lord. I think she goes in this direction because she observes him being constantly bullied but finds that he holds no grudges & does not seek to get revenge on the bullies. He remains calm & serene in spite of everything he must endure as a hostage prince.

By the way, the 1st half hour of Episode 1 was so boring, I almost stopped there. I am glad I did not because I enjoyed it once the pace picked up & a real story line kicked in beyond just blowing things up & killing other beings. And as usual, as I was watching Episode 28 after Ye Xiwu dies & Tantai Jin descends in to madness, I was thinking there's got to be more to this story because there are 12 & 1/2 episodes left! SPOILER ALERT - There was; essentially they go through 4 lifetimes together in 3 different realms. It ends with a 495-year long pregnancy! (Or maybe Immortals have the ability to induce embryonic diapause at will. Which is more plausible, because if you are an Immortal you would likely be able to do something to avoid having morning sickness for that long!)

Saw something I really did not want to see today. While I was opening the gate I heard the annoying call of a bird; I was hoping I was wrong. But I was not; it is a Peach-faced Lovebird. I have not seen them in North Kohala before. There are a lot of them down in Kawaihae at the Hamakua Macadamia Nut Company shell piles, foraging for whatever there. I hope this is just a lost bird & there are not breeding colonies in North Kohala; they are an invasive species in Hawaiʻi.

Peach-faced Lovebird (Agapornis roseicollis).

The window for Episode 48 of the eruption of Kīlauea has been revised. It is now expected to occur some time between the 23rd & the 25th.