MAʻO Organic Farms

I picked up our MA'O Organic Farms Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) box of farm goods this afternoon; our pick up site is at the Whole Foods in Kahala. I signed us up for a box every other week for a total of 8 boxes; so we'll be trying this out through December. I figure every other week was a safe amount since I have rarely seen The Roommates bring vegetables in to the house; I am pretty sure I can finish off a box in 2 weeks if it turns out they aren't into vegetables. Here's what we got today: head lettuce, sassy salad, arugula salad, beets, carrots, eggplant, kohlrabi, baby pac choi, cilantro (aka Chinese parsley), American parsley, & Meyer lemons. (FYI There is also Italian parsley aka flat-leaved parsley; it has more flavor than American parsley which tends to show up more as a garnish than a flavoring ingredient.)

I return the box in 2 weeks at my next pick-up; it collapses for storage until then.

The contents.

A better look at the contents.

After I got the CSA box, I went to Longs which is on the other side of the mall; I wanted to see if they still had chicken chips. And they did! It looks like this is the place I need to check for Bear treats; provided, of course, that Bear likes the chicken chips as much as he liked the chicken poppers! The chicken chips should be arriving at their house some time tomorrow.

As soon as I got home, I unloaded the CSA box and started making dinner. I decided to have kohlrabi and beets with a chicken bratwurst that I had picked up at Kokua Market a couple days ago. I cleaned and peeled the kohlrabi and did my best to cut them in to 1/2" x 1/2" sticks but some were so small I just cut them in half. Most of the beets were also on the smaller side, too. I cleaned them up, boiled them, then sliced them. I texted The Roommates when they were ready to eat. And discovered that none of The Roommates have ever had kohlrabi before!

The raw ingredients for tonight's dinner.

Pau with prep work; the beets lost a bunch of their color.

My dinner. Sort of; I ate the rest of the kohlrabi & beets that The Roommates did not.

For lunch I had a container of Siggi's Yogurt; it's really an Icelandic dairy product called skyr that is like yogurt. It is extremely rich, it has 9% milk fat! In case you're wondering, regular milk is 4% milk fat (minimum, by law), low fat milk is 2%, skim milk is 1%, & of course non-tat is 0%. So, yes, Siggi's skyr is really rich! Apparently it is made by adding cream after they ferment it. And somewhere along the way they strain it and remove the liquids so it is also very dense. The 4 ounce container had 10g fat, 10g carbs, 9g protein, & 170 calories.


After lunch I was looking out the door at something in the cat run; I couldn't quite figure out what it was. On closer inspection I found it was one of the old stove grates and Keala's RFID tag for the Wireless Whiskers feeder! It looked like her tag got hooked on the grate and she dragged it halfway across the cat run before the metal ring on the tag broke! I checked her out and she was fine, she had not hurt herself doing it. Later I got another set of rings and put her tag back on so she could open the feeder again. I also turned all the grates over so she wouldn't get caught on any of them again.

This is what I saw when I peaked out.

Keala came to check it out while I was sorting things out.

I started checking my urine again for ketones to see how I was doing on the keto-carb cycling diet; I was interested in seeing if I could still burn fat while eating more than 25g of carbs. On Saturdays I can eat up to 75g of carbs, so this morning, just for the heck of it, I checked my urine. I had never had anything more than a trace when I checked my morning urine; this morning at 5:30 it was between small and moderate! Amazing! I guess it really is working.

My ketone level at 5:32 am.

Well it looks like convalescent plasma is not any better than regular plasma in helping COVID-19 patients survive. A randomized controlled trial (the highest standard of research trial) was done on 464 moderately ill patients (on oxygen but with no organ damage). While there appeared to be better relief of symptoms, increased oxygenation, and increased reduction in viral load in the treatment group, there was no difference in the slowing of the progression of the disease or mortality rate between the 2 groups. So it seems like it might make you more comfortable while you are recovering but it won't increase your chances of surviving.


I can't believe what's happening with politicians undermining scientists, especially their own scientists! If you're having a hard time figuring out whether you should believe the politicians' science advisors, here are 50 Experts to Trust in a Pandemic. They do not work for the government, they are well-respected researchers. You can fact check what the government talking heads are saying against what these experts are saying; I have seen at least 2 being interviewed by reporters that are fact checking things.


There were 110 new COVID-19 cases reported today for a total of 11,326 known cases. Three more deaths at the veterans home were unofficially noted but not yet added to the state death toll so that remains at 120. There were 6584 active cases, so that number is slowly going down. In spite of 2 days this week being under 100 new cases, the rolling 7-day average is 106.6. The leveling out at about 100 new cases/day sort of seems to point at new exposures happening over the Labor Day weekend which was 2 weeks ago; the people following the rules and keeping away from big gatherings are bringing the curve down while the party goers are making it climb back up, so they even each other out.

Flattening is good, but the curve really needs to keep going down to save more lives.

These are the latest data on the testing results; I don't think all the surge testing data has been added to these graphs yet.

This is all tests.

This is tests sent to local labs.

This is tests sent to labs on the continent; the tallest bars are from the 1st 2 weeks of surge testing.

It's great that we are now getting more information about the number of contact tracers that the department of health has working. The information tends to be released a couple days before the end of the week they say they are for; that's probably an artifact of their hiring practices, like not starting someone at the end of a week. Since last week, 9 new contact tracers have been hired; we know that at least 5 of them are from the UH CCTT cohorts. Thirteen new ones have been added to Oʻahu which has the highest need; apparently 4 are on loan from Kauaʻi which has the lowest need. Maui & Hawaiʻi counties' numbers have remained the same. For Oʻahu that still means about 40 cases per contact tracer (I used the total active cases); so if you worked non-stop that would be 12 minutes per person. But that's active cases, which is not who the contact tracers are talking to; they are dealing with the close contacts. The most recent information I can find (from about a month ago) is that R=1.6; that means, if all close contacts have been reported by the cases, there are 10,534 close contacts that the contact tracers need to be working with! Auē! I'm pretty sure every single close contact will not be known or reported, so let's say 2/3 are; that means over 7,000 close contacts or about 43 per contact tracer or about 11 minutes each per day. Those contact tracers will be busy, busy, busy!


Hauʻoli lā Hānau e Hannah!