Page 34 of Big Island Neighbors
“This could be a selling point,” Cody said.
“What could?”
“All local ingredients. If you made meals, you could sell what you grow for more of a profit. There’s a guy in the neighborhood that offers weekly meal service, but it’s mostly a bunch of imported junk. If you marketed your meals as one hundred percent island grown, it would set you apart from everyone else.”
“Island grown means no lasagna or chicken pot pie.”
“People can get those anywhere. Not as good as yours,” he amended, “but lasagna’s not going to catch people’s attention. You could offer food they can’t get anywhere else.”
“There are plenty of local carbs,” she said, thinking out loud. “Taro,‘ulu, sweet potato, squash.”
“And you know tons of hunters and farmers who would be happy to give you meat in exchange for meals. You’re an amazing cook, Mom.”
“Thank you, sweetheart. It’s a good idea.”
“You could do more than just soup. Cook big batches of stuff for people to reheat, do one weekly pickup. I can even deliver once I’ve got my driver’s license.”
Cody’s excitement was catching, and she grinned at him over the counter.
“What about those‘ulubrownies you make? Those would probably do great at the farmstand. Or the farmers market?”
“I don’t have the time or the energy to think about setting up at markets, but you’re right about the brownies. We could sell those at the farm stand.”
“Or offer delivery!”
She chuckled. “Get your license, and then we’ll talk.”
“Mom?” Paige came into the kitchen, dragging her feet. “Dad wants to talk to you.”
“Okay.” It hurt Tara’s heart to see Paige so despondent. She hadn’t been herself since Mitch had canceled his flight home, had hardly smiled since except for when she was on a horse. Tara watched her trudge back down the hall before picking up the phone. “Hello?”
“Are you keeping up with the girls’ schoolwork at all?”
“Fine, thanks,” she said flatly. “How are you?”
“Is this a joke to you? Paige had her multiplication tables memorized when I left, and now she can’t even tell me what seven times seven is.”
Tara pressed her teeth together to avoid saying something hateful. The man hadn’t talked to his kids in nearly two weeks – and when he finally got Paige on the phone, his first impulse was to give her a pop quiz? The poor girl had frozen up, and no wonder.
“Hello? Are you there?”
“I’m here.” She turned off the burner beneath her carrot soup and set a lid on the pot.
“What are those girls doing all day, anyway? They’re going to fall behind!”
She didn’t believe in “behind”, and he knew that.
Mitch believed in a conventional, top-down approach to learning, while Tara was a believer in self-directed education.
He had pressured Cody for years to go to the local public highschool, and Cody had finally appeased him by enrolling in the competitive charter school that he attended virtually.
Tara and Mitch had come to an uneasy truce over the years with regards to their children’s education. He would occasionally barrel in and push the kids to learn something that he felt was necessary, and she would step back and let him in the name of keeping the peace. Then he would lose interest again, and the kids would do as they liked.
“If you can’t keep up,” he said, “maybe you should put them in school.”
She pulled the phone away from her ear and looked down at it for a minute, feeling oddly displaced and disconnected.
Then she disconnected the call.
