What I'll do is I'll just do our oldie Como and then that's just a chant that we do that

Welcome as people who've never been on the property.

This is Scott Fisher. He works for the Hawaii Land Trust and he was welcoming us to an ancient

archaeological site on Maui where some of his ancestors once farmed tarot.

For those of you who like us are not fluent in Hawaiian,

Scott helpfully provided a translation.

So basically it's talking about the wind that starts off with the wind that blows here.

Paaheai Mai Kamakani Kili Oopu is the wind that carries a scent of the Oopu,

which is a also refers to the fish pond because the fish pond was a fresh water fish pond and it grew

tarot and particularly the fish water fish species the Oopu. We visited this site because once upon a

time it helped support an entire empire in Hawaii and while the fish were critical what was really

amazing was the tarot that was growing there. It might be gray and winter in a lot of the northern

hemisphere but this episode we at Gastropod are going on a tropical adventure. That's right you're

listening to Gastropod the podcast that looks at food through the lens of science and history.

I'm Cynthia Graber and I'm Nicolette Willie and this episode is not just Sunsea and Sand. We're also

meeting a root veggie that a lot of North Americans have never tried but that experts think is

among the most ancient crops cultivated by humans and it's one that some 500 million people still

depend on today. Before we went to Hawaii my only relationship with tarot was in the form of tarot

chips purchased at Whole Foods. Sure they're delicious but it's kind of hard to imagine tarot as a

staple food. That's exactly what tarot was in Hawaii. The entire island chain built their cuisine

around tarot. They considered themselves physically related to the tarot plant. tarot was life. Although

it's not originally from Hawaii. This episode we have the story of an easily overlooked root that

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