FEAST is a partnership with a partner organization, Feed The Mass, that aims to empower our Pasifika community to traditions of cooking cultural foods. In this program, our goal for FEAST is to introduce ways we can intersect food sustainability, the importance of food to Pacific Islander culture, recipe sharing, and accessible substitutes for ingredients on the main land.

Taste of taro

In June, we had our first installation of the FEAST program through a workshop, Taste of Taro. This event taught our Pacific Islander community in Portland about the cultural history of the Taro plant (commonly used in all of Oceania), shared 10 dishes using Taro, and provided each family with a Taro starter plant. In this workshop, we dove deep into Taro plant maintenence in the Pacific Northwest climate, and how we can guarantee they will provide more than 4 harvests a year.

Not Your Grandma’s Poi

Not Your Grandma’s Poi was our second workshop under our FEAST program. We partnered with Jacobsen, Executive Director and Founder of Feed The Mass, to give a cooking demo on how to use substituted ingredients to make poi. Our community was shown how to use Ube and Taro to make poi before we gathered to talk story over a meal with various Taro dishes. Following Jacobsen’s demo, Kaina, UTOPIA PDX Director of Programs, gave us a demo on how to make poi the traditional way using indigenous tools and methods.