KCC Tuesday Night Farmerʻs Market

Kapiolani Community College and the Hawaii Farm Bureau hold a fabulous farmer's market on the campus grounds on Saturday morning. The problem, however, is that there are bus loads of tourists that are dropped off to buy the hibachi Kona oysters and the fried green tomatoes. Locals that are trying to pick up their CSA boxes or just get fresh fruits, veggies and flowers need to deal with parking and major crowds.

As a result of community input, they are now trying a three-month experiment, starting last night, to offer the farmer's market on both Saturday morning and Tuesday night from 4-7 pm. It's smaller in scale, but I was able to pick up baby kale and choi sum from Ho Farms, and pick up dinner from Chef Hardy of Michel's.

Chef Hardy makes a yummy mushroom pouch and skewers a crusty piece of ciabatta bread to soak up the juices. The mushroom pouch consists of Hamakua mushrooms, onions, carrots, spinach and garlic baked in a parchment paper pouch. It's so good, I even eat the cloves of garlic that are soft and melty.

The other perk, is that the crowds are mostly local and much smaller, which means that we could go around and taste samples from different vendors.

I was able to try Moloka'i honey from John and Linda Dalire's All Hawaiian Honey. The kiawe honey was thick and grainy with an almost dijon mustard consistency. It was nice, not too sweet. I also learned from Linda that the lighter honeys, like the lehua honey are sweeter while the darker honey like the eucalyptus honey is less sweet.

I also tried the fried mocha from Taste Wave. It's a puree of sweet potato and edamame made into a pan mocha concoction, then dipped in batter and deep fried. She then sprinkles furikake as a final touch. I have a quarter of a piece and it's great hot with a little bit of saltiness and great gooey texture mixed with the crunch of the batter. 

Cold Fryye makes handmade ice cream, so I tried a sample spoon of their green wave ice cream made with sea asparagus. I like sea asparagus with natural sea salt flavor (like limu) plus the crunch like watercress. The ice cream is a pale green, not quite as deep as the green tea ice cream color, but when I tried it it was a little too salty for my taste and it was missing the depth factor that I look for in ice cream so I didn't splurge on that. 

Hopefully more people come out. Follow Hawaii Farm Bureau on Twitter https://twitter.com/#!/hnlfarmers to get updates.