Last week Dan went to our wine store Da Kine Wines. Our friend Danny (who is a chef at Merriman's) was working and through chit chat Dan told him what we were having for dinner. It sparked the chef's interest, he asked if we ate like all the time and Dan said yes, pretty much. I have the recipe on my website. Basically, I was working at the farm and asked Dan to make dinner. I told him what to do and he did it, it turned out fantastic! Anyway, Dan started telling him I was a personal chef. You know how Dan can get when he's really excited about something. Dan was so excited, he got Danny excited (the other owner's name is Dan too!) and Danny suggested I do a "pot luck" at one of their Saturday wine tastings. He suggested I feature the farms produce as well. So, sometime in the near future I will bring some finger food made with some produce from the farm (they also do mushrooms) some of my flyers and some of Jillian's flyers and pimp my food! Wish me luck!
I can't remember if I wrote about AJ Irons, a personal chef here on Kauai. Back in Colorado, when I was researching, I found his site. Turns out, he does some work at the farm and buys produce from them. Jillian told me about him cooking for Will Smith and his family so he's pretty big time. We became friends on Facebook the other day so I sent him a message trying to connect with him. His reply brought tears to my eyes! Here is what he said:
Oh my! I am beyond touched at your perfect approach to the island community and people's being! You are more than welcome to pick my brain, assist me with some of my clients and/or have a few of them.
It certainly was never a dream of mine to have my life the way it is now BUT GOODNESS to the powers that be! I never had any expectations when I came here to be such a connector and grower! Jillian powers me and fuels my business. So PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE pick my brain...I am not sure what is up there right now during these extremely jam packed weeks of clients, but (he left his personal phone number here)
Speaking of Jillian and my last piece of good news. She called me this morning and told me about a place for rent. The landlord wants to have the tenant grow an organic garden and she will even put in an agriculture well! It gets better! For $50.00 more a month we get more space; it's a duplex. It has a full size fridge and full size gas stove and a lanai. Unfortunately, it is only a one bedroom but, baby steps right?
The place for rent is that white house down there
Jillian gave us directions to the general area and the landlords contact information. Dan called and left her a message and we went to check out the area. We were no less than 2 blocks away when she called Dan. So, we went to meet the landlord. She is a slender white lady that looks 60 but is 70. She had us come into her house so we could talk. The picture is from her upstairs lanai. We walked into the most amazing, huge, open, space. The entire downstairs is open to the outdoors with a fantastic view and a beautiful living area. She is an artist and her artwork was everywhere. She took us upstairs to get a better view of the property and into her 1000 square foot dance studio (because she likes to dance) covered in more art. The art was mostly from all over the world as she likes to travel. We talked, she takes pictures and edits them in iMovie. We used to edit. We are really clicking, she's asking advice about her video camera, when 4 green parrot looking birds flew by in formation. Dan pointed them out and she was surprised, she's seen a lot of birds fly by but never those! She wants to rent it out a month before our lease is up but we may be able to get out of it because there is a mold problem here that our current landlord is ignoring. We are going down next week to check it out, the current tenant will be out by then.
