Market Basket
Homemade cookies that say Hawai'i

By Joan Namkoong
Advertiser Food Editor

Mama Ella's Cookies include the flavors of cacao, coffee, kava and poha berries. Jeff Widener • The Honolulu Advertiser

The former rose grower in Pa'auilo on the Big Island now focuses her energy on baking cookies in a commercial kitchen at her home. She uses passion fruit, cacao, coffee and kava, grown in Hawai'i, to flavor her cookies. Yes, there are kava cookies, made with tea and ground root from the mildly narcotic plant. The combination in a cookie makes your mouth tingle just a little. Arakawa also makes passion fruit, poi, coffee and poha berry cookies, all round orbs of crunchy buttery flavor, along sugar cookie or shortbread lines. Chocolate chippers features ground cacao beans.

Arakawa has been baking cookies commercially for four years and takes special orders by phone: (808) 776-1254. In the meantime, head out to Pat's Island Delights at 98-450 Kamehameha Highway, Pearl City, for a cookie fix. An 8-ounce bag is $4.99.

Fruit baskets from Moloka'i

Grant Schule and Janie Bryan, a husband-wife farmer team associated with Kumu Farms on Moloka'i, are introducing their concept for buying organic and locally grown produce. Molokai Market Baskets is the name of their company, which will provide residents of O'ahu with baskets of fruits, vegetables and herbs delivered to home or office. The Organic Gourmet basket features items that are all organically grown, most from Moloka'i with the remainder from the Mainland.

Items change weekly. An assortment of a dozen fruits and vegetables sells for $39.99, and 15 items is $49.99. The Molokai Pride basket features organic and conventionally grown sweet potatoes, cucumbers, taro and pineapples. Eleven items are $39.99; 14 are $49.99. A Grocer's Basket with Natural Staples is also being offered, featuring pastas, grains, beans, chips and crackers, sauces, oil and soy products from well-known producers. That basket is $49.99. Customers can call in weekly or have standing orders delivered each week.

For more information, look at www.molokaiorganics.com or phone, toll-free, (888) 959-9411.

Send shopping queries and new-product information to: Market Basket, The Honolulu Advertiser, P.O. Box 3110, Honolulu, HI 96802. E-mail jnamkoong@honoluluadvertiser.com, fax 525-8055 or call 525-8069.