Jungle Madness

 There is only so much whacking with a machete that one can do before going a little crazy and playing with moss. We reached that point right before deciding to take a day or two off. So we packed a bag and hit the road.

We decided to head to the coast and take a swim. On the way, we discovered an awesome farmers market in Kea'au, just 15 minutes from our town. 
We drove to Isaac Hale beach in Poho'iki for a swim in the ocean followed by a dip in the warm pool. The ocean water was so clear and shallow, with lava rocks lining the sea bed. And the warm pool was a perfect way to finish our day-- it sits near the ocean in the border of the jungle. 

After spending the night in Hilo, we woke up with a pretty acute coffee and/or chocolate craving. We headed to a place called Sweet Dreams Hawaiian Coffee and Chocolate that we found on Yelp and arrived at the door right as Ron, the owner, was opening shop. Ron proceeded to tell us about the cacao orchard that he had started on his property about 9 years ago which had inspired the opening of his chocolate shop. He walked us through the entire process of chocolate-making, taught us his secret cacao bean fermentation process and gave us countless tastings of cacao beans, fermented cacao fruit juice (magical!), chocolate ganache, white chocolate... at some point we lost track. We were on an intense chocolate high and we never wanted to come down.  

We stepped into the kitchen with Ron and showed him how to make homemade coconut milk for his ganaches and lattes. We also taste tested his homegrown, homemade vanilla extract, sweet vanilla paste and vanilla bean powder as well as about 10 chocolate bars made by every brand in the Hawaiian market. He explained that after working with chocolate as much as he had, his palate tends to get confused and its helpful to have fresh perspective. We were more than happy to oblige. He was pretty thrilled with us and by the end of the visit, we had  a shopping back full of cacao pods and a baggy full of his top shelf dark chocolate. We promised to come back soon and help him harvest some more coconuts so that he could keep a stock of fresh coconut milk for his cafe. 



 Leaving Hilo, we were pretty much floating on clouds. I don't even know how Byron was driving the car. All the high grade chocolate had us in some sort of alternate dimension. Somehow, we mustered up the gumption to grab some fixings for dinner and head home. We decided that pasta would be the perfect thing to pull us back down to earth before bed.

Somehow, we cooked up some amazing pasta marinara with lentil sprouts and sage on our little wood stove. It was a delicious meal and gave us the kick in the pants we needed to get back to work today... or maybe that was the chocolate. 







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