Once a year Maui comes together to honor its farmers at the Maui County Agricultural Festival on the grounds of the Maui Tropical Plantation. The people who grow our food and the restaurants utilizing the bounty come together under one delicious, instructive tent. This year’s focus is Maui vegetables, and so the festival will show off the spectrum of colorful produce, special-occasion vegetables such as asparagus and fennel and crops like “coles” (members of the Cruciferae or mustard family) that are the bread and butter of diversified commercial agriculture on Maui today. “These veggies are often overlooked yet keep numerous farmers and farm lands productive,” says Maui County Farm Bureau Executive Director Warren Watanabe. “The best way to support local agriculture is to buy and eat what Maui grows, which means to be familiar with all crops.” The group Slow Food Maui will be on hand in the taste education tent, where Maui coles will be the stars of the show, with farmers and chefs teaming up to prepare any one variety in several ways. “Caramelized, simmered or in salads, bought from a farm nearby, coles may change the way Maui thinks about daily food and local ag,” says Susan Campbell, chair of Slow Food Maui. mauicountyfarmbureau.org [Jen Russo]
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