Jo McGarry is host of the long-running lifestyle radio program called Table Talk, which airs on KHVH 830 AM in Honolulu on Saturdays from 10-11 a.m.
Awhile back, when she interviewed Chef Alan Wong at his King Street restaurant, she also interviewed Richard because he’s the farmer who supplies some of the delectable stuff Chef Alan cooks up.
The segment with Richard is online. Listen to Richard’s first podcast here!
Richard Ha writes:
Today’s weight: 197.2 lbs. This week’s target weight was 196.0 lbs. I am 1.2 lbs. behind schedule.
Starting weight on 10/15/06: 200.0 lbs. End goal, on 12/31/06: 185 lbs. Since 5/23, I have lost 17.4 lbs.
My goals: To lose one pound per week for 15 weeks, and to lower my resting heart rate to below 50 beats per minute.*
* (Heart rate goes down as one gets into better shape. Lance Armstrong’s is said to be 32. George W’s was reported to be 47 beats per minute. Out of shape, mine is in the 70s. My best was 52 many years ago.)
* * *
I’ve noticed that when I include a lot of weightlifting in my weight loss program, I develop a voracious appetite and always have to take entire days off from exercising in order to recover. This week I took three days off, and I gained weight. I need to slow down and not try to do too much, so I don’t overeat and also rest too much. Catching a chest cold this week did not help.
When I’m not overtraining, I am in good enough condition that I can comfortably do 90 minutes on the elliptical trainer, twice or even three times per week. When I spend 90 minutes on the elliptical, I use up about 1,200 calories (that’s about a third of a pound). And on the other days of the week, I can still, easily, do 30 minutes. This next week I’m going to catch up and get back on schedule.
Something else I started doing is eating a really good salad for my dinner every night, along with a little meat, fish or chicken. I’m fortunate to know where to get some really tasty lettuces, tomatoes, cucumbers and watercress. I also make sure to eat a good breakfast and lunch.
I’ve gotten away from the salads but I’m going to get back to them now. As soon as I finish writing this, I’m going to the market to get dried cranberries, yogurt, oranges, anchovies, dijon mustard, bacon bits, green onions, lemon juice, sunflower seeds, grapes and red wine vinegar. I’ll use these ingredients to experiment and make interesting, tasty salads. I’m leaning toward green salads that have fruit in them, and fruity dressings. I’ll report back on what I come up with.
My resting heart rate today is up: 65. I don’t know if the chest cold has anything to do with it. Whatever the case, I need to get it into the mid-to-low-50s.
Rumor has it that George W. is going to ride the Kulani trails with the boys. I know he’s going to be on O‘ahu soon—and I thought I saw the decoy Air Force One doing touch-and-goes at the Hilo airport.
Kama‘aina Backroads, the interesting new cable television program that takes a local—not visitor-oriented—look at the “cultural perspective, traditions and island way of life” in Hawai‘i, came and shot some footage at Hamakua Springs earlier this week.
Roland Joseph Torres, the program’s O‘ahu-born creator, says they’d been filming at the Keauhou Sheraton when he tasted the restaurant’s delicious heirloom tomatoes and was transfixed. Hot on the tomatoes’ trail, he loaded up the van and headed over to Hamakua Springs Country Farms to check out the farm (and taste some more).
It was fun to watch Roland (shown here with his camera) and assistant Harpal sample the heirlooms (“Broke da mouth!” said Roland) and learn a little about what drives Hamakua Springs.
Richard told them how it’s always taste that determines what they decide to grow on the farm, not ease of growing or handling or shipping; that they find the tastiest product they can find first, and then figure out how to grow it.
He drove them up to see the source of free, abundant water that will eventually power much of the farm operation and we watched as Roland held onto overhead branches and crossed a rickety old plantation bridge to look at the stream.
Richard told the camera how sustainability—of the land, the employees, the community—is foremost, and how he makes farm-based decisions based on the family’s intent to still be farming in 100 years.
It was great to watch this interesting new program put together a small segment about the farm. It’s just one part of the Kama‘aina Backroads program that airs tomorrow—Saturday, 11/11/06, at 9 p.m. on Oceanic Cable 16.
Roland Torres has an extensive background in television production, having worked on television series for KFOX-TV, the AMC Television Network, PBS and more. In 1996, he won an Emmy for his work on a “Get the Vote Out” series targeting Hispanic youth.
In case you don’t get a chance to see the Kama‘aina Backroads program when it airs tomorrow, Roland says he will post some of it on his Kama‘aina Backroads website. I’ll post a link to it when it’s available. —posted by Leslie Lang
At Kaumana Elementary School’s 100th Birthday Bash a couple weeks back, kindergarten teacher (and Hamakua Springs daughter-in-law) Kris Cabreira said it was “chicken skin” to see the two daughters of the school’s first principal and hear their story.
“We found out that their father used to ride his horse to school,” she said, “and that he decided to find another profession after he wanted to get married but his salary only allowed him to feed his horse.”
Kris, who is married to Richard and June’s son Brian, talked about watching a 70-year-old former student bowing down to his 95-year-old principal. Seeing the composer of the school’s alma mater. Having the Cera family there, who used the event as a family reunion.
She said the day was packed with more people than they expected. There were former and current students, parents, teachers and stuff as well as the community.
Hamakua Springs donated bananas, tomatoes, cucumbers and lettuce to the celebration, and the kindergartners and first graders sold them in their produce booth to raise funds for classroom supplies and field trips. They sold out of five cases of each product.
There was also a history of Kaumana School memory room, games, food booths, craft booths, a rummage sale, a plant sale, and 100th birthday commemorative t-shirts. Entertainment went on all day with Taishoji Taiko, Dru Kekaualua and friends, and Ho’okoa. In the afternoon, students put on a talent show. The principal, Lloyd Matsunami, a counselor and Gumby took turns in the dunking booth.
“We were surprised at how much this meant to so many former students,” said Kris. “You could see the pride in their eyes. It was a very humbling experience.”
Today’s weight: 196.8 lbs.
This week’s target weight was 197.0 lbs.
I am .2 lbs. ahead of schedule.
Starting weight on 10/15/06: 200.0 lbs.
End goal, on 12/31/06: 185 lbs.
Since 5/23, I have lost 17.8 lbs.
My goals: To lose one pound per week for 15 weeks, and to lower my resting heart rate to below 50 beats per minute.*
* (Heart rate goes down as one gets into better shape. Lance Armstrong’s is said to be 32. George W’s was reported to be 47 beats per minute. Out of shape, mine is in the 70s. My best was 52 many years ago.)
* * *
I am managing to lose weight. I have started eating salads for my evening meal. This is working well for me as long as I control snacking and stay on my exercise program. I am able to lose extra weight when I exercise at a low rate for 90 minutes and avoid eating more than normal.
But I am not making good progress on my other goal, which is lowering my resting heart rate.
On 5/23, my resting heart rate was 65 beats/minute. Today it’s 59. That’s only six beats better than May 23.
My goal is to get it below 50. I need to face the fact that I have not been training intensively enough. I need to start riding my mountain bike up Banana Hill again.
My average training heart rate of 125 beats for 30 minutes is higher than before, when it was 108. But my interval training heart rate, now at 145, is lower than it should be. I need to get it up over 155 for three or more intervals during a 30-minute session.
photo by Macario
A couple weeks ago, about a hundred people turned up for a mile-long walk through the beautifully landscaped Panaewa Rainforest Zoo. It was part of the national WalkAmerica event, and the first time the March of Dimes event was held in Hilo.
It’s just the kind of event we like donating our product to. It raises money for a good cause while also encouraging people to get outside for some physical activity.
The band No Etiquette played. A breakfast was available—bentos from Blane’s Drive-In, juice from Meadow Gold, and our Hamakua Springs bananas. And Terry the Tiger was there. That’s a guy in a giant white tiger costume (the Panaewa Zoo is, of course, home to the white tiger Namaste).
It turned out that everybody who participated in the walk took home a door prize. There were gift certificates from places like Hilo Bay Café, the Palace Theatre, Seaside Restaurant; $50 worth of tickets from Cold Stone Creamery; boxes of posters from Hot Topic, gift baskets of hair products from Regis Salon, and a lot more.
And if that wasn’t interesting enough, a couple goats from the petting zoo joined the party and they did the walk, too. Although they didn’t get out and gather as many pledges as some of the people did. While one gentleman raised more than $1000 (which won him a weekend stay at the Hilton Waikoloa), the goats only brought in $5.
Our congratulations to everybody who walked for the March of Dimes. We hope to see you there again next year. — posted by Leslie Lang
We are excited to announce our brand new tomato recipe contest!
We look forward to seeing your best tomato recipes. You can enter original recipes in one (or more) of three categories:
• Entree
• Salad
• Preserves & Condiments
Each category offers three prizes: $350, $300 and $250 Makana cards (gift certificates) good at Foodland and Sack and Save stores.
Top recipes will be prepared by students of the food service program at Hawai’i Community College, and then judges will select winners.
Winners will be announced on March 14, 2007 on the Hamakua Springs blog Ha Ha Ha!. Entries may be featured on the blog, in other promotional materials, and possibly in an upcoming Hamakua Springs cookbook.
Read the blog for updates on the contest and more about Hamakua Springs Country Farms.
Allan Okuda, director of the Hawai’i Community College Food Service Program, left, and Richard Ha, owner of Hamakua Springs Country farms, right
How to enter
Email your entry to contest@hamakuasprings.com, or mail it to Hamakua Springs Recipe Contest, 421 Lama St., Hilo HI 96720. Include the recipe’s title, ingredients list, preparation, your full name, address, daytime phone number and email address. Enter as many recipes as you’d like (each recipe must be submitted in a separate email or on a separate page, each with full information as above) but we must receive all entries by 11:59 p.m. on January 31, 2007.
The rules
1. Submit your favorite original recipe that includes tomatoes in one of the following three categories: Entree; Salad; Preserves & Condiments.
2. Entry requirements:
Ingredients must be readily available. Please indicate which category your recipe falls under. Please include the name of the dish, ingredients with exact U.S. measurements, how it’s prepared, and the number of servings. Your recipe must not have been previously published and it must be an original creation.
3. How to enter:
Email your entry to contest@hamakuasprings.com, or mail your clearly written or typed entry to Hamakua Springs Recipe Contest, 421 Lama St., Hilo HI 96720. Include your full name, address, daytime phone number and email address. We must receive your entry on or before January 31, 2007.
4. Judging:
Judges to be announced here soon! Judges’ decisions are final. Winners will be announced at Ha Ha Ha! on March 14, 2007, and by phone soon thereafter.
5. Prizes:
Three grand prizes (one per category): $350 Makana Cards (valid at Foodland and Sack and Save stores) Second place in each category: $300 Makana Card. Third place in each category: $250 Makana Card.
6. General rules:
Open only to Hawai’i residents. Employees of Hamakua Springs Country Farms, its affiliated companies, contest sponsors, their agencies and families are not eligible. No purchase is necessary. Enter as many recipes as you’d like. Hamakua Springs cannot be responsible for problems with email transmission or late, lost, damaged, incomplete, illegible or misdirected mail. Entries cannot be acknowledged or returned. All federal, state and local laws and regulations apply. Prizes are nontransferable and may not be redeemed for cash. Judges’ decisions are final. Hamakua Springs Country Farms reserves the right to use entrant’s name and likeness and to publish any entry submitted. All entries become property of Hamakua Springs Country Farms. Entry constitutes permission to edit, modify, publish and otherwise use the recipe in any way without compensation.
7. Winners:
For a list of winners (available after March 14, 2007) send a stamped, self-addressed #10 envelope to: Hamakua Springs Country Farms, 421 Lama St., Hilo HI 96720.
And one last thing:
Now that you’re here, we hope you’ll look around our blog. We generally update it three times a week and we have a lot of fun with it.
Here at the blog you can read about Hamakua Springs president Richard Ha’s “39 pounds in 39 weeks” weight loss goal. He updates how it’s going–and how he’s doing it–every Monday. As of 11/1/06, he’s almost halfway there!
We also blog about:
our farm
our employees
our tomatoes, lettuce, bananas, cucumbers and new products
trips we take
our community
riding bicycles
restaurants that use our products
how we operate
the beautiful Hamakua coast of Hawai’i
sustainability
charity events we are involved with
articles written about us
hydroponics
wearing shorts
and much, much more.
If you like what you see at Ha Ha Ha!, please bookmark us or sign up for our RSS feed. And now go get your tomato recipe together!
Richard Ha writes:
Today’s weight: 197.5 lbs.
This week’s target weight was 198.0 lbs.
I am .5 lbs. ahead of schedule.
Starting weight on 10/15/06: 200.0 lbs.
End goal, on 12/31/06: 185 lbs.
Since 5/23, I have lost 17.1 lbs.
My goals: To lose one pound per week for 15 weeks, and to lower my resting heart rate to below 50 beats per minute.*
On 5/23, my resting heart rate was 65 beats/minute. Today, it’s 65. It’s high because I’ve been training at a higher intensity for longer periods of time. I expect my resting heart rate to be in the mid-50s when I’m well rested.
* Heart rate goes down as one gets into better shape. Lance Armstrong’s is said to be 32. George W’s was reported to be 47 beats per minute. Out of shape, mine is in the 70s. My best was 52 many years ago.
* * *
Last week I was in San Diego at the Produce Marketing Association trade show. I had access to an exercise room, which allowed me to keep losing weight even though I was on the road.
Recently I started lifting weights. I’ve been doing arms, legs and abdominals on one day, alternating with working on my chest and back on another day. I do 10 minutes on the elliptical at 125 heart rate and then one set of whichever body part is scheduled.
Then I do 10 minutes at 129 beats per minute on the elliptical, and then a second set of the body parts I’m working on that day. Lastly, I do another 10 minutes of elliptical at 139 beats per minute and then finish off with the third set of weightlifting.
I’m phasing in the weightlifting at a very slow and easy pace. I’ve got lots of time and, after all, it really is all about the journey. Besides, I’ve done this many times before and I’ve learned how to avoid sore muscles when first starting back at the weights. I’ve learned that the trick is to not push too hard during the first three weeks.
I fly to Sacramento tomorrow, where we will visit Ag Tourism facilities as well as farm stand operations. This will help us to design our own facilities when we’re ready—we’ve got plans to expand our operation in the near future. I return to Hilo on Thursday.
Diane Ley, of the County’s Research and Development branch, asked if I would do an interview with Howard Dicus for a segment of the public television program PBN Friday. I thought it might be related to June and me receiving a Best Farmer award at the Hawaii Agriculture Conference this Thursday.
Here is the information I got from Howard Dicus:
“The PBS Hawaii studios are at the corner of Dole and University, across from the UH campus….It would be good if they could arrive by 9 a.m., which will leave plenty of time for them to get their TV make-up on before we start taping. The make-up lady will also REMOVE the TV make-up after the taping if they don’t want to go around town looking like movie stars.
“I’m working on the script for the all-food show, and as it stands now it opens with Andy Hashimoto, who has separately confirmed, then Richard Ha will be on second, Joan Namkoong third, and chef Ming Tsai on the couch. I’m treating Ha, at least for purposes of beginning the segment, as a representative example of the Big Island farmer who raises a number of crops.”
As soon as I got the instructions I started preparing mentally. Many years ago, when I did a TV presentation with Dr Jack Fujii, former Dean of the College of Agriculture at the UH Hilo, I had a bad experience. I had diligently prepared for the presentation, but the red light on the live camera blindsided me.
That time it was as if a million people were staring at me through the lens below the red light. And to my horror, I had found my mouth jogging ahead of my brain. I had no idea what I was talking about and I was sure I was sweating profusely.
I wanted to be sure this wouldn’t happen again, so this time I prepared myself for that red light. At first I imagined that behind the lens there would be an average person wearing boxer shorts, no shirt and a three-day-old stubble. This, I thought, would be an easy person to relate to. But then the thought popped into my mind that that guy’s family kitty might be named “Spike.” Suddenly that image seemed unpredictable and possibly unreliable, and I worried it might make me start sweating again.
So instead I imagined a nice couple with two young children, two doggies and a kitty named “Kitty.” I practiced on my flight over to O‘ahu by imagining the “Fasten Seat Belt” light was the red light on top of the camera. After a few tries, I realized I would have no problems with this nice family and with the red light. I was very comfortable.
But then I started worrying about the makeup—would they ask me to put on lipstick? No way, I thought. I don’t do lipstick. But it might really help our farm if I made a good impression on public television, I thought, so maybe colored ChapStick would be okay. But no lipstick. Absolutely not.
I found the PBS station, no problem. And soon after arriving it was my turn for makeup. I asked Dean Hashimoto, the Dean of the University of Hawai‘i’s College of Tropical Agriculture, to take a picture of me getting made up. The last time I remember putting on makeup was when I was in the fourth grade and they made my cheeks red for a Christmas play. I’m pretty sure this might be the last time I ever get made up.
Dean Hashimoto was up first and he spoke about the College of Ag and its programs. I remember that he did a really good job.
Then it was my turn to be interviewed. I wanted to talk about sustainability, our close partnership with Chef Alan Wong, how we would not be anything without our wonderful employees, our Food Safety certification and more. But the absolute only thing I remember about the interview was what Howard Dicus told me before it started: “Before you know it, it’s over.”
He was right. Before I knew it, it was over and I didn’t remember one thing I said. Not one thing.
(It airs on Friday, November 24 at 7:30 p.m. on PBS Hawai‘i, by the way, if you want to see what I said. I know I do.)
I walked off and Joan Namkoong went on. I remember that she talked about her cookbook and the Kapi‘olani Farmers Market and she did great.
And then it was all over. The only thing left to do was have the makeup person remove the makeup–unless I wanted to walk around looking like a movie star. I thought, Hmm, I could walk around looking like a movie star? And I walked out the door.
It didn’t take me any time at all to realize that no one noticed or cared. I got a phone call, and afterward I realized the makeup might have smeared, leaving me with a dirty face. This must be what women worry about. This is more than I wanted to know about makeup.
So to recap, I met an imaginary nice family on the other side of the red light, I learned something about wearing makeup, and there was absolutely nothing in between. Very interesting day.