Part One – The Build Up:
A meeting was held on the land to discuss the water situation. The land’s irrigation system has been working sporadically, and it was time to bring everyone onto the same page. After we’d discussed the water, the conversation turned to Thanksgiving. We all agreed that to have it on the land would be excellent, but the lack of a working oven would be a hindrance to the baking of pies and the roasting of turkeys. How to proceed without an oven?
What about an imu? An imu (pronounced ee-moo) is a Hawaiian earthen cooking technique, where a pit is dug and a fire is built. Nestled within the flames sit many pounds of carefully selected lava rocks, chosen for their many holes, which prevent the build up of pressure and their subsequent explosion. The fire heats the rocks, which fall to the bottom of the pit, and atop them go layers of banana stalks, fresh leaves, and then the food, which is then covered by more leaves, wet blankets, a tarp, which is finally covered in the loose dirt. Why don’t we just build and imu and imu the turkeys? Easier said than done, but it was agreed. We had one day to build, stock, and set fire to the imu.
Now, I had been on hand assisting on two other imu-building occasions, and I had seen an imu work and an imu not work. The one that worked yielded some incredibly delicious food, perfectly cooked, lightly smoky tasting, and falling from the bone tender. The imu that didn’t work yielded many pounds of pig sushi. Ewwwwwww. So I understood that the relationship of central importance in a successful imu is the relationship between the hot and the cold. The dance between the hot rocks and the cold stalks that provide the steam and the leaves that protect the food, and the dance between the food and the hot leaves that envelop it. We needed very hot rocks, and we needed the food to be close to them, but not too close. The search for rocks and wood was on.
If only one could just go and grab a truckload of ordinary lava rocks for ones imu, life would be so simple. But imu rocks are special. Imu rocks are what happens when lava gets frothed-up full of air, and then cools rapidly, resulting in a soufflé-like puff of a rock. Still heavy and rock-like, but now filled with air cavities, imu rocks will heat up and radiate like the volcanic basalt Kauai is made out of, but will not explode, and to ignore this fact and use regular rocks in ones imu was to invite potential explosion, injury, and trauma. The problem is that 90 percent of Kauai’s rocks are not suitable imu rocks. That leaves ten percent that are the right consistency, and of that ten percent, fully half will be no good, because the little pockets invite air and water, which speeds the decay of suitable imu rocks, and it wouldn’t do to build an imu with crumbly rocks.
I walked the bed of our stream, up and down, back and forth, searching for decent rocks and finding very few. Luckilly, we had all pitched in on the gathering of rocks, and I knew that we already had on hand maybe forty pounds that the kids and Sprouts had gathered earlier in the day. I figured to build our imu we would need approximately a hundred pounds of rocks, so I only needed to find sixty or so pounds. That still meant finding the rocks, filling my arms, hiking up the river, up the hillside to the wheelbarrow, unloading the rocks, and then repeating the process. You can see why Hawaiian families cherish and zealously protect their imu rocks, passing them down generation to generation. Gathering these little buggers represents a serious outlay of energies.
I found another forty pounds of rocks by the river, another twenty pounds scattered around the land, and still felt like we were short. By this time I was tired and hungry, so Melissa and I took a trip to a friend’s house nearby, and when we arrived there, I remembered that he had on hand a great pile of imu-quality rocks! This wonderful soul gladly provided us with eight big stones, another fifty pounds of rocky perfection. Our imu was within our grasp.
We arrived back home to find that Sprouts and Zander had done a first class job digging the imu pit. We had decided earlier that since it was Thanksgiving and the food and sharing of food was to take center stage that we would literally dig the imu right in the center of the stage in our earthen amphitheater. Sprouts and Z had done their job well and a roughly four by four foot hole was dug. To get the rocks to the stage to unload, I got the rare and wonderful pleasure of driving my truck through a thick stand of bananas and tall grass. The bananas were diseased and had to come out, but the grass was strong and maybe seven feet tall, with stalks as thick as your thumb. The day before, Sprouts and I had been laboriously hacking our way through the growth with machetes, and so it was a real thrill to apply some Japanese muscle in the form of my loyal Toyota truck to plowing a new road into the staging area.
The rocks were unloaded, and now we had a large pile of perfect stones, patiently awaiting the flames that would heat them. Earlier in the month Melissa had come across a team of men working at felling and trimming a large stand of casuarina trees. The casuarina, or ironwood, is a hardy pine that has been cultivated here on Kauai since the 1800′s when the blanco invaders found that it was an excellent windbreak, grew well in sandy and salty soil, helped prevent erosion, and burned hotter than satan’s flamethrower. The arborists had left behind stacks of fresh cut ironwood, free for the taking. Melissa grabbed a truckload full, and we stacked the logs in the sun, where they cured for a month. Ideally they would have cured longer, but they would go. I mean, you can set metal on fire if you get it hot enough. Alan had grabbed a trailer load of pallets, which are still miraculously free and can be found all over the island. Between the cut rounds of ironwood and the beautifully cured wood of the pallets, we had plenty of fuel to heat our stones.
The building of our first imu began thusly, with a flurry of cooperative preparation. By the time night was falling I found myself alone, prepping the fire. In the bottom of the pit I laid seven of the ironwood logs to act as a base and provide air flow. On top of these logs I built a tall cone of cardboard and dry palm fronds, stuffing the gaps with newspaper. By the time I got to this stage, the peeps had gotten wind that the imu was going and so there were many of us pitching in to build the structure that would be set on fire. The pallets were either smashed with a sledgehammer, or pried apart with my halligan bar, or both. Around the central cone of cardboard went a teepee of pallet wood, and around the pallet wood we leaned the ironwood logs. In every puka, or hole left open in the structure, an imu rock was stuffed. We then had a large ziggurat of wood, paper, and rocks sitting half in the pit. Sticking my arm deep inside this soon-to-be inferno, I lit the newspapers at the core and stepped back. Bright orange flame, indicative of a correct oxygen-to-fuel-to-heat ratio flickered to life, and in less than a minute, the pile was entirely aflame.
Now we had a waiting game on our hands. We had to let the fire burn down to coals to properly heat the rocks. But how long would this take? It was now about nine o’clock at night. Let’s come back in two hours, said I. We all agreed to meet back up in two hours to put the food in the oven. I walked up the hill to the house that Melissa and I share, where we watched a documentary. Well, I watched the documentary. Melissa fell promptly asleep. Two hours later I walked down the hill to see that the fire was still burning strong, nowhere near a glowing bed of coals. It would take another hour at least. This message was dispersed and back up the hill I went to try to snooze for an hour. An hour and a half later, I stumbled back down the hill to see that we were getting close to being ready to assemble the food and leaves. The only problem: I was alone. To properly build the imu meant that the food had to be prepared, ti and banana plants cut and assembled, blankets soaked, tarp put in place, and then dirt shoveled on top. It was a lot of work left to do, it was now past midnight, and I was tired. I’d been going strong all day. Oh well, I thought. Maybe next year.
I sat under the stars watching the fire burn down, and a car pulled up. It was Jesse and Jessica returning from a late night grocery store run! As we three stood together to survey the fire, none other than Sprouts walked up! He had spent the last hour and a half defrosting and seasoning the turkeys. I had been sleeping and then thinking slightly bitter thoughts, and Sprouts had been awake, working his little red butt off. I was inwardly ashamed at my selfishness. But now I had the chance to make all right, for we had an imu to assemble! As the last of the flames burnt down, Sprouts and I finished the preparation of the turkeys. Jesse and Jessica gathered banana and ti leaves. I ran into the dark night with my machete and harvested a few fat breadfruit from our trees. The milky white sap of the breadfruit ran like tears of joy at being included in the feast. The stars were shining. The weather was perfect. No moon, but no rain either, and warm lovely breezes to comfort and support the spirit.
Jesse used a long handled metal shovel to level out the now glowing dull red imu rocks along the bottom of the imu pit. I used a machete to slice banana stalks into rounds and then quartered each round length-wise. The banana plant is really a giant underground rhizome, and what we think of as banana trees are just its stalks and flowers. To keep its stalks rigid, the banana rhizome pumps them full of water, and it is the water in these stalks that we would use to cook our food. On top of the sizzling hot rocks went the long strips of dripping wet quartered banana stalk, and steam immediately began hissing up into the night air. On top of the stalks went banana leaves in a nest shape to make a nice cooking platform. Into this nest, we tucked our food: two huge turkeys seasoned with sea salt, curry powder, rosemary, onions, garlic, and coconut oil. Next to, on top, and around the turkeys went the five breadfruit, whole heads of garlic, whole onions, sweet potatoes, yams, red and russet potatoes, and beets. On top of the food we carefully laid ti leaves, then banana leaves. On top of the leaves went the blankets. Melissa and I had two Mexican blankets that we donated to the imu endeavor, and these I soaked in the shower Jesse had built near the green house. Jesse, Jessica, Sprouts, and I each grabbed a corner of the first blanket, and we said a word or two of thanks for this incredible opportunity. Then we lay the blanket down to further trap the hot steam within. Then the second blanket went atop the first. Over both blankets we laid a folded white tarp. Then with hands and shovels, the four of us covered the tarp with dirt; first the edges, and then the center. Saint Turkocious had been laid to rest in their underground sarcophagus.
The food was in the ground. We had done it. We now had twelve hours to kill while the food was gently steamed. At roughly two thirty in the morning we all sat, cheerily exhausted, in Jesse and Jessica’s camp, smoking victory bowls, and sipping victory beer. Goodnights were said, and we all toddled off to our respective bedding. Before going to bed, I jumped in Jesse’s shower to rinse the sweat and smoke off of my tired self. To walk, clean, cool, and naked, up a grassy hill in the starlight, with an underground oven full of food behind you, and the knowledge that you’d helped assemble it, is a sweet feeling. My head was full of goodness as I lay it down on the pillow next to Melissa’s sleeping form. And then, guess what? Neither of us could sleep. We were both wide awake at three AM, giggling and perky. Curses.
Part Two – The Eat Down:
I woke up when Melissa got up, around daybreak, to feed the chickens. But then I promptly went back to sleep. Around ten AM I got back up, made coffee, and began thinking seriously about getting back in bed. I was groggy, a little sore, and not entirely sure I wasn’t dreaming. The night before had been a strange one, rest-wise. Melissa and I usually go to bed when it gets dark, around 8:30 in the Winter time. To have been up, then down, then up, then down, then back up for two hours of concentrated effort, then wide awake in bed, then asleep, was a recipe for confusion. What day was it? When did yesterday end and today begin? I had missed the demarkation line. Luckily, I had the help of my good friends caffeine and THC to help steady the good ship JacksonSauce. I smoked, sipped coffee, puttered, and lazed until about well past noon. Bliss.
Finally, it was two thirty PM. The imu had been imu-ing for twelve straight hours. The food was either cooked or we had a problem on our hands. There entered a period of great discussion as messages were relayed back and forth from the imu pit, where I stood hungrily waiting to open the oven, and the kitchen, where Cathy and her girls were cooking up their own morsels. Consensus was split. I wanted to open the oven, and eat now, in anticipation of the other food being ready in an hour or so, and others wanted to wait to open the oven so that all the food could be eaten together. My reasoning was that if the food in the imu wasn’t cooked, then to wait would be folly, because if it was indeed underdone, we needed to know about it ASAP. If the food in the imu was done, however, we could eat some of it, and save the rest for when the remainder of the food had cooked, meaning we’d get to eat twice. Win win, thought I. In the end, the decision was reached to wait until six o clock to open the oven, so that everything could be eaten together. Dismayed, I set to trudging up the hill, with visions of a quick Jackson and Melissa dash to get fish tacos in my head. But then a miracle occurred! Suddenly and without warning, opinions suddenly experienced a full reversal.
It was decided that the imu would indeed be opened, and the food within used as human fuel to finish the cooking process, and we would all eat again at six-ish. Victory!
We gathered around the imu, where Jesse and I had already scraped away the top dirt, and removed the tarp and blankets. The top dirt covering the imu had been very, very, hot; a good sign. Together, using tongs, sticks, and quick fingers, we all peeled back the leaves covering the food to find…
Heaven.
Steamy, fragrant heaven.
There! A sweet potato! Hiding in a corner! Grab it! Eat it! How did it taste? Perfect. Phew! Relief. But how were the turkeys? When Zander and I had attempted to perform a coordinated grab on turkey one, him tonging the neck area and I tonging the rear cavity, with the intention of lifting the entire bird onto a waiting platter, something wonderful happened. As we both lifted upwards, the turkey’s breasts and wings had fallen completely off! The meat was falling off of the bone. Cooked perfectly. Better than perfectly. I had never before experienced a turkey tasting this good. It was hot, moist, salty, spicy, smoky, and much of it “accidentally” fell into my mouth on its way to the table. We used tongs and fingers to unload the contents of the imu onto a ti leaf covered folding table, first the vegetables, and then the turkeys.
This was no pork sushi, my friends, this was turkey perfection! The hot rocks had super-heated the airless cavity in which the food had sat, cooked it, and then cooled it just so, allowing us to gratefully retrieve it. The imu had worked flawlessly. The Hawaiians knew what they were doing. The ancient ways were wise ones and were perfectly suited to our needs. Thank you, ancient wisdom, and thank you to the many minds it took to accumulate and pass on that wisdom.
We unloaded the feast onto the table, and many hands tore into it. Potatoes were eaten. Garlic cloves were squeezed out of their skins into awaiting mouths. Onions were peeled and slurped into smiling faces. But the main event were the turkeys. The perfectly perfect turkeys. White meat steaming. Dark meat smoky and snappy. Each bite a plunge into an ocean of turkey.
The fact that so many people had worked so hard to pull the meal off was not lost on me, and it made the taste that much sweeter, the calories that much more rewarding. I had made my first ever batch of pickles a few days before, using cucumbers picked by Sprouts, grown here on the land by so many people, in gardens created and tended by so many others, using ingredients created and assembled by still countless other folks. These, and every other item on the table was the same. Each morsel represented so much love and care and attention. Beyond slow food, this was ancient food. Going back to the sunlight that had grown the trees that heated the rocks, and then the creation of the very rocks themselves, five million years in the past. Many hands had worked very hard to allow this moment be born.
So much effort resulted in so much deliciousness! I ate myself silly, then showered again and went up to my house to change into evening clothes. I wanted to be warm. I wanted nothing more than to eat until I passed out in the long grass, and sleep the night away. We had an hour to pass before dinner proper would occur. Now in long pants and a sweatshirt, I gathered up my necessaries: peace parsley, pipe, lighter, water bottle, fresh beer. I walked down the hill, refreshed, renewed, and ready to eat again soon.
Down in the amphitheater, my ohana was waiting. I plonked alongside my possessions into the grass and was surrounded by my friends. Musical instruments appeared, and an inter-galactic jam began. The food waited on the nearby table, covered to keep it warm and protect it from the flies. We smoked, drank sips of cool beer, played music, and laughed. There was a turkey and victory induced giddiness in the air. We had done it! We had gone without Babylonion cooking methods right back to the roots. An earthen oven. Hot stones. How much more roots can one get besides just eating the bloody fresh bird? We had challenged ourselves and won. Deliciousness was our reward.
The rest of the food came out from the kitchen and joined us. We all stood and held hands in a circle around the food. There were perhaps twenty five of us? Thirty? It was hard to tell. I was turkey-drunk and my vision was rose-colored and fuzzy. I was surrounded by many children, happy parents, those of us still childless, and knowingly smiling dogs. I said a few words of thanks, for the people assembled, for all the work that went into the creation of the food and the moment, for the land that sustains and contains us, and gives a frame to our efforts. Alan said a prayer of thanks. Angela thanked Jesus and prayed that we would one day own the land, and then she too blessed the food.
We began our dinner proper then, using ti leaves and huge collard greens for plates. Alan and I rekindled the fire in the imu pit, and used it to dispose of the steamed banana and ti leaves, plus the bones from turkey one, so that the dogs wouldn’t eat ALL of them, and to keep the flies and bugs away. The fire snapped and cracked merrily and people sat down in little grassy nests, eating and laughing together. Many trips were then made from grassy nest to table to re-fill leaf plates, and then back into the snug nests to eat, and eat, and eat.
I must be honest; I had been well prepared mentally to do without. To suffer a bit of longing for food stuffs I’d appreciated during Thanksgivings-past. I was prepared, oh my friends, to eat hippy food. Cold lentil wraps. Tempeh logs. Sprout salad. And then to bed. I was prepared for this. Secretly, in the dark reminiscent tunnels of my heart, I longed for white fluffy dinner rolls. Ham, sweet ham. Lagoons of sweet cranberry sauce. I was happily prepared to go without any of these luxuries and simply enjoy whatever foods happened that day. I would simply treat Thanksgiving as though it was any other day, and be thankful that I was being fed at all.
But, genie-like, everything my heart had hoped for was there! Jessica made the lagoon of cranberry sauce I so desired. Kelly Joe made a gloriously sweet ham and sweet corn dish, and the white fluffy rolls I would have never told anyone I wanted were there in a basket, nestled next to miniature croissants. Did I mention dessert? We had pumpkin pie, we had pecan pie, we had cakes, we had fresh whipped cream, we had raw, vegan chocolate pudding. We had everything I had secretly wanted and SO MUCH MORE. The Universe had read the lines written on my soul and had provided all the ingredients for a nostalgia-filled feast.
The sun began to set. Bella Dottie, the new farm puppy, lay asleep on Melissa’s sarong; whimpering sleepily and happily, her little belly distended with food. Our visitors began to pack up in preparation for leaving. Leaf plates, bones, napkins, and flotsam disappeared into the fire, and the land was clean again. The remaining food was consolidated, carried back to the kitchen in a wheelbarrow, and there prepped for storage. Melissa and Kelly Joe did the dishes. Alan and I sat at the picnic table and concentrated on breathing.
It was far and above the most memorable and rewarding Thanksgiving I have ever experienced. Was it because this was the first time that I had ever seriously cooked a Thanksgiving meal? In the past I had simply shown up at the appointed time, held hands with my family, and then dived in to whatever foods had been assembled. At this Thanksgiving meal, every item of food on the table told me a story about the person that brought it and the process by which it had come to be. There was a knowing involved in this meal that made being thankful for it easy, obligatory even. Was this Thanksgiving different because Melissa and I were hosting it? We had found this land, and opened it up to the other families. In a way all were there because of us. And further, we were there because of the largesse of the land owner, whose faith and trust in us had allowed everything to assemble. And the fact that I was able to engage with the land owner was thanks to my parents and their faith in me.
My thoughts drifted back through time, thinking of all of the strange little events that had lead me to the land known as One Love Gardens. I thought of Zero One, and Jesse, and the then upsetting idea of shutting down that chapter of my life. I thought gratefully how none of this could have began unless that chapter had ended. I thought of my parents and my family and my old friends and life in New York and Los Angeles. How different was this life, yet how similar. The delightful contrast between my old life and my current one was one facet of my gratitude and glee.
I think that in the end, to clumsily try to put feelings into words, and thus remove them twice from reality, it was the gestalt of all of it together that pleased me so much. The knowledge that I came from a wonderful past, and was in a wonderful present. The knowledge that if I had to, I could make a very effective oven out of sticks, stones, dirt, and leaves. The knowledge that I was surrounded by bright, capable, generous people, who also came from wondrous pasts and who also shared in the appreciation of the present. I have no idea what the future holds, but if the present is any indicator, the future will be one of delicious togetherness, full of great food, relaxed good will, unhurried meals, no trash, and a great deal of reliance on ones skills and ones friends and neighbors.
For we all worked hard to make Thanksgiving the great day that it was. No one person could be thought of as the prime mover for the cornucopia of deliciousness that the day represented. We all gladly bore the responsibility for perfection, from the oldest human to the youngest puppy. From the oldest lava rock, to the freshest new ti leaf.
I have more to be thankful for than words can ever convey. I am so in love with life. Thank you for reading this, and sharing the experience with me. If these words do not tell the story in as much detail as you’d like, stay tuned to see it all on an up-coming episode of CoconutLand.
Love from Kauai.
-Jackson
p.s. A large leak in the irrigation was located and capped. Water service is back at fully awesome. Thank you’s to Sumi and Eitaro for their vigilance.
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