Chocolate | Saying nothing in particular

I am a picky eater; I really am. Gooey things make me squeamish.

But I tossed this gelatinous glob into my mouth and, per instructions, rolled it around with my tongue and then … bit down on the seed pod. I chewed a few crunchy bits and swallowed them before being warned by Mason: “You won’t get much sleep tonight but you will be regular as hell!”

I’d eaten the seeds of the cocoa plant; the things which are carefully fermented and ground into award winning cocoa powder. Mason was the Hawaiian botanist who, with all the charm, wit and energy of a young Robin Williams, kept a couple dozen chocoholics entertained for three hours.

Mason showing us the core of the cocoa pod with all those gooey globs of goodness.

Pods come in many shades of red-orange and banana-yellow. To ascertain which ones are ripe, they peel off a bit of the skin. Yellow inside is good-to-pick; green inside needs more time. Mason joked that the reason Hawaii produces so many good football players is that they grow up tossing cocoa pods. They’re about the same size as footballs and their skin is similar in texture.

Lydgate Farm is located at the base of the Makaleha Mountains near the end of Olohena Road (581). Besides the cocoa plants, they grow all kinds of native Hawaiian fruits, harvest honey from their own beehives, and, recently they’ve begun cultivating vanilla beans and producing their own vanilla extract. After you’ve heard the process for fertilizing vanilla plants, you’ll appreciate why real vanilla extract is so damn expensive! And always sold out. $65 dollars a bottle. Yikes!

I wouldn’t recommend this tour for everyone. It’s expensive and off the beaten track but for gardeners, cooks, and chocoholics it’s three hours of informative fun. Their chocolate is indescribably good, their honey is sublime and yes … I am still fighting the urge to buy the vanilla extract once it becomes available. God help me, I’m on the waiting list and I don’t even bake. Talk me down folks.

Next – I end with sunrises and sunsets. Let’s see if you can guess which is which! Aloha.

The flowering plant featured this month on the Wasabi calendar is the Akebia Quinata or the Chocolate Vine, a native of Japan, China and Korea whose fruit is harvested in late August and September.

Akebia grows on hedges, slopes and hills and is similar to the Dragonfruit. The rind of the fruit is used in vegetable and meat dishes and the pulp is considered a sweet delicacy but don’t eat the seeds. They are bitter and nasty. As its name implies, it has a chocolatey aroma.

However some plant guides warn that Akebia is an invasive species.

In September there are two national holidays in Japan: September 15th, Respect for the Aged and September 23 Autumnal Equinox Day. Being in the “aged” category myself, I think we deserve more than one day a year to be respected, don’t you? Thus saying, I would probably hide in my house on a Respect for the Aged day rather than be pointed out to young children:

“Look! There’s an Aged who can still walk!
Smile for the Aged, children!
Clap for the Aged!
Let’s take the Aged’s wrinkly old hand and walk the Aged through town for everyone to see!”

Yikes!

Autumnal Equinox Day marks the first official day of fall and is yet another time set aside for the Japanese to honor their ancestors. However, visiting a graveyard in late September could be deadly (no pun intended). The bulbs of the Red Spider Lily are planted in graveyards because they contain an alkaloid toxic to animals and so the graves beneath them are not disturbed. Even humans are wise to avoid the touch of the Red Spider Lily, aka Flower of Death.

And guess when these death plants blossom?