What would you do if you lived on an island where 90% of the food you eat is imported and there was a possibility that one day those imports would stop?

Hawaiians are facing a real dilemma. If all imports to Hawaii stopped today, they would have enough for everybody for one week. This has them worried.

Every since my vacation in Maui last week, I have been trying to answer this question for myself?

My first thought was they could eat a lot of really cool fruit. I had been enjoying a beautiful spread of different fruits every morning for breakfast while pondering the question “Does it get any better than this?” so it seemed totally plausible. But, by dinner, I was ready for some veggies and began to wonder what I could eat for local vegetables.

While out on our tourist adventures or hanging at the resort, we found that many people on Maui are growing vegetables and raising animals. Heck, those roosters that woke me up every morning belonged to somebody! We met lot of people on a farm tour, at farmers’ markets and in a gelato store that are thinking about how they can produce more food themselves–eat more locally grown food. It was inspiring.

Now that I am back home in Northern California where we can get most anything grown local here, I still find myself thinking about Hawaiins’ dilemma.  What would I do? How could I try to be more self sustainable? Then I realized, I live on an earthquake fault line, I should have similar concerns. Hmm…

If you are interested in learning more about the growing sustainable food movement in Hawaii, check out the amazing publication Edible Hawaiian Islands.

We went to Hawaii last week for our vacation. It was my first time and I loved it. Besides sitting on the beach watching the sunset, snorkeling and heading to the pool whenever I needed a change of scenery, I enjoyed hunting down and learning about local foods. (I will probably write more about what I learned in later posts.)

I never did find the pickled mango calling out to me from the roadside signs the first day we arrived, but I did manage to learn a lot about pineapples. We took an amazing farm tour of Maui Pineapple Company.  The highlight of the tour was picking your own pineapples to bring home. We gave them out as gifts and saved two for ourselves.

One pineapple will go toward making a pineapple upside-down cake this weekend and the other went on a pizza, of course. Tonight for dinner we had prosciutto pineapple pizza. It was so good.

It is super easy to make. Roll out dough. Top with red sauce. Cover with prosciutto, layering as close as possible. Add cheese and pineapple on top. Bake on the bottom rack of a 500 degree oven for 8-10 minutes.

August is grilling month. Not only is it too hot to turn on the oven in your house, but there are lots of fruits and vegetables that are delicious when grilled. My new favorite combination, peaches and tomatoes, is to die for. A must try.

Grilling is an easy and delicious way to make pizza during the hot summer months. If you are like me, you hate to turn on your oven and heat up your house so you turn to the grill. 

This month’s issue of Sunset magazine features recipes for grilled pizza. The recipes themselves look fantastic, but I found their grilling instructions to be a bit intimidating. We have all seen the clip from Julia Child’s cooking show by now where she announces that “you must have the courage of your convictions” before she tries to flip the potato pancake and drops it on the stove. That is exactly the scene that came to my mind when I was reading Sunset’s instructions. They tell you to roll the dough out on oiled parchment paper and then flip it over onto the grill. While Child was able to put the potato mess back in the pan and keep cooking, I am not what would happen if you miss the grill.

If you saw the recipes in Sunset, but don’t have the courage of your convictions, there is an easier way. Go here for simple, easy directions on grilling pizza along with a recipe for Margherita pizza. Better yet, try my grilling directions with Sunset’s Bianca pizza recipe. It looks good.

My mom likes to tell the story of when I was a teenager making my lunch. As I was heating a hot dog in the microwave, I turned to our dog and proudly announced “Kim’s a cook’n!”

My mother laughs when she tells this story, but where does she think I got the idea from? While my grandmother cooked and baked almost everything from scratch (her homemade doughnuts are legendary), my mother did most of her cooking from a box and used the microwave more and more as the years went on. By the time I started in the kitchen, I continued the downward spiral from scratch cooking to assembling and heating.

Michael Pollan discusses this decline in cooking in his most recent article in the Sunday New York Times Magazine. A food-marketing researcher explains how years ago people killed, plucked and gutted a chicken before they cooked it. Who would do that today? (Okay, I know some people who still do but not on a regular basis.) He claims our grandchildren will think that cooking something for dinner is as crazy as starting with killing a chicken. On the cooking spectrum ranging from scratch to reheating, our society seems to be moving more and more toward the reheating end. You can see the end of cooking from here.

Gosh, I sure hope not. For myself, I stopped the downward progression. Over the years I have learned to cook by watching my mother-in-law and her mother-in-law and by being willing to make oh so many mistakes. Now that I am almost 40 and have a family of my own, I cook almost every night and I don’t even own a microwave.

But the question remains, what does it mean to cook? I can only define it for myself. I strive to cook from scratch as much as possible, but I am willing to use shortcuts if need be. Cooking for my family is a balancing act made up of day-to-day choices as to where to draw the line between scratch cooking and convenience. I make all birthday cakes from scratch. I get a CSA box of vegetables from a local farm and challenge myself to use everything. (Sweet corn ice cream anyone?) I eat Fritos.

In order to srike the right balance, I focus on my pantry. If I have items like flour and yeast, I can make bread, usually in my bread maker. If I have rice, beans, a can of tuna, I am all set to add some sauteed vegetables and call it a casserole. The trick is to have items for scratch cooking as well as shortcut items. I have both canned and dried beans, instant rice and regular. If I have time and plan ahead, I cook from scratch, otherwise, I open a can or boil a bag.

I do draw some hard lines. I have never bought a ready-to-eat meal that you simply reheat in the oven. I always make my own breadcrumbs and stock for example. I keep them both in the freezer. The convenience forms of these foods are too processed for my taste.

I am always negotiating with myself as to where to find the balance and am proud of my progression from microwaved hot dogs to homemade doughnuts. I am currently teaching my 5-year-old daughter how to make my grandmother’s doughnuts so she doesn’t have to start as far back as I did. I don’t know where she will find herself on the cooking spectrum but I am hoping she will not find cooking crazy.

Do you cook?  If so, how? And, what does cooking mean to you?

I got a beautiful basket of multi-colored cherry tomatoes. I thought it would make a beautiful pizza and it did.

Usually, fresh tomatoes have a lot of water that comes out when you cook them making a pizza crust soggy so you have to salt the tomatoes ahead of time to draw the water out. I got brave with the cherry tomatoes. I skipped that step. I put the cheese down first, lots of it, and then topped it with tomatoes. I also used a heartier whole wheat crust. It worked out great.

What do you do when you put fresh tomatoes on a pizza?

I love Mark Bittman. His recipe ideas are truly simple, practical and mostly fast. He seems to get what it means to put a healthy dinner on the table every night.

His 101 recipe articles in the New York Times are always a highlight. Last week he published 101 simple salads for the season. There are lots of great ideas for simple summer meals. The best part is that you could put almost any one of them on a pizza.

Try it. Take #10: Cook whole grape tomatoes in olive oil over high heat until they brown lightly, sprinkling with curry powder. Cool a bit, then toss with chopped arugula, loads of chopped mint and lime juice.

The only thing you need to do to make this a yummy pizza is to bake mozzarella cheese on a pizza. When it comes out of the oven, top with the above salad and serve.

Or, #43. Grate raw beets (use the food processor to avoid ruining everything within spattering distance) and toss with watercress or arugula. Top with sherry vinaigrette and a little goat cheese. Especially obvious, perhaps, but also especially popular.

Spread the goat cheese on the pizza along with the grated beets. Bake and then top with watercress and arugula tossed with the sherry vinaigrette.

Or #70. Shred brussels sprouts in the food processor, preferably with the slicing disk. Toss with vinaigrette and crumbled bacon.

Leave off the vinaigrette and add a little cheese and you got a great topping for a pizza. It would go good with a whole wheat crust.

If you give it a try, I would love to hear what you come up with.

We moved into our house 4 years ago and every year we still find surprises. This year, a weed I was too lazy to pull, turned into a fig tree. It provides for a great view outside my kitchen window. We didn’t get many figs, but I was thrilled because a caterer friend tantalized me with tales of making fig and gorgonzola pizza with figs from her tree. It is simple and delicious.

Fig and gorgonzola cheese pizza

1 large yellow onion

about 1/2 pound gorgonzola cheese

8-10 figs, sliced

Slice yellow onion and saute over medium-low heat until nicely caramelized. Roll out pizza dough and brush with olive oil. Spread out on the bottom of the rolled out dough.

Add figs and crumbled gorgonzola cheese. (I used a creamy gorgonzola cheese called dolcelatte gorgonzola but you can use any kind you like.) Salt and pepper to taste.

Bake on the bottom rack of a 500 degree oven for 8-10 minutes, until crust is slightly brown. Remove from oven. Serve hot. Enjoy!

photo from Farm Girl’s World

My daughter got invited to two birthday parties today. One is for a pizza and movie night and the other one is for an afternoon party at the park with delivered pizza and birthday cake.

Do you serve pizza at your kid’s birthday? If so, do you make it our order out?

 I pick up my CSA box of vegetables from Terra Firma Farms on Wednesday.

Of course I got some zucchini! See my June recipe for more on zucchini.

As my countertop overflowed with summer abundance, I couldn’t decide what to put on my whole wheat pizza dough, so I put a little bit of everything. I caramelized a red onion for the sauce and topped it with zucchini, corn and a little gruyere cheese. When it came out of the oven, I drizzled pesto over the top.

My family doesn’t like to eat zucchini, but they ate the pizza and enjoyed it in-spite of themselves!