Butterfly visiting a yacon flower

A Gulf Fritillary (Agraulis vanillae) visits a yacon flower in our garden in Ha’iku, Maui. Photography by David Fry.

The ‘Leftovers’ Fatty

Over the past few years I’ve been experimenting with a small side-by-side Charbroil smoker. It’s always been a challenge to keep the temperature consistent, but the taste of kiawe-smoked meat is always worth the effort. On the meat smoking forums at reddit, people kept talking about this thing called a ‘fatty’ which sounded entirely too good to be true. You take a pork sausage, flatten it out, fill it with whatever you want, and roll it back up for the smoker. The truly serious then wrap the fatty with woven strips of bacon before tossing it on the smoker for a few hours.

So with Thanksgiving behind us, I thought it was time to try my hand at fatty-making and bacon-weaving, and what better filler for a fatty than the leftover fried turkey and stuffing from Thanksgiving.

  • 1 lb. pork sausage
  • 1 lb. bacon (for the weave)
  • 1/2 pound chopped fried turkey
  • 1 cup stuffing
  • 1/2 cup chopped celery (sauteed with garlic and black pepper)
  • 1/2 avocado

I loosely followed the instructions at smoking-meat.com, particularly when it came to weaving the bacon.

For the smoker, we used chopped kiawe wood, which is a type of mesquite.

Garden spider

Bees in our garden

Our basil always attracts a bee swarm. Today, while weeding the garden, I noticed red dots on some of the bees. While I was initially worried it could be varroa destructor mites, friends on the internet have assured me it’s just red pollen. I feel lucky to have so many bees, considering how many places are suffering colony collapse disorder. But in upcountry Maui, we are lucky to be surrounded by many other families with organic gardens and small farms that keep bees happy and healthy.

 

Haiku Hoʻolauleʻa and Flower Festival, April 25, 2015

Please save the date for next year’s Haiku Hoʻolauleʻa and Flower Festival.

Saturday, April 25, 2015

http://haikuhoolaulea.org/

 

Kale

Wind Power on Maui

Wind power on Maui

Haleakala National Park

Haʻikū, Maui