Jeanne Vana
Friday - December 07, 2011 Share |
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Occupation: Owner, Big Wave Farms
Where were you born and raised? Upstate New York, then we moved to Indiana. My father worked for Eli Lilly, so we ended up traveling a lot; we lived in Australia, Hong Kong and the Philippines.
What started your love of the land? In Australia when I was a little girl, I would pick wildflowers and sell them at the side of the road. I would play in the creeks with my brothers and their Tonka toys, and we’d be landscaping the mud and the dirt. I ended up getting a horticulture degree with the intent of working landscaping.
And of food? My parents entertained a lot, and my mother had some amazing recipes. The pesto that we use on our pizza is her recipe.
Oh, that pizza is one of my all-time favorite foods. That pizza has a life of its own. It started out as a pan tart when I was selling Maui Surfing Goat cheese, but the goat cheese got too expensive, so I thought about using the pesto and the tomatoes ...
I know you don’t like to waste anything. No, we don’t waste a thing, so the natural fit for us was to use off-grade tomatoes and create something that would complement the farmers market the pesto pizza seemed to be it.
Grilling the base over an open flame just adds to the flavor. Yeah, if we put it in the oven, it just doesn’t taste the same.
Now that we’re seeing some big waves up on the North Shore, people also will be able to see your Big Waves on the roadside. We’ve come up with a way to ease traffic stress as it backs up, we’ll be delivering slices of pizza to cars on trays, and we’ll also have bottled water and Ono Pops. People can find out where we are by following us on .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).
Do you cook at home? No too exhausted.
What’s always in your fridge? The end cuts of Parmesan Reggiano we save them and give them away to customers who are buying our tomatoes at the farm stand in Haleiwa. They add great flavor to soups ...
Where do you like to go for dinner? Oh, I love Thai food ... a great steak ... but still my favorites are Chef Mavro, Alan Wong’s and Ed Kenney’s town.
With whom would you most like to have dinner? I would probably have to say Julia Child. We grow a tomato in her name, and I grew up with her and The Galloping Gourmet.
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