157 replies to this topic

[hzrt8w]

My spice rack, mostly organized alphabetically. Everything from ajwan seeds to zaatar. On the counter is a glass cutting board with a sushi motif. I wish I could find it in a larger size.

Really? Wow! Neat!

I buy spices in bulk (plastic bags) and reuse some of these small spice jars to hold them. I just tear off the old labels. I look them up by shape, color, smell and taste. Drive my wife nuts. But hey... who owns the kitchen?

Edited by hzrt8w, 27 December 2006 - 02:24 AM.

[SuzySushi]

My spice rack, mostly organized alphabetically. Everything from ajwan seeds to zaatar. On the counter is a glass cutting board with a sushi motif. I wish I could find it in a larger size.

Really? Wow! Neat!

I buy spices in bulk (plastic bags) and reuse some of these small spice jars to hold them. I just tear off the old labels. I look them up by shape, color, smell and taste. Drive my wife nuts. But hey... who owns the kitchen?

Oh, I recognize them by sight, color, smell, and taste too. But my husband doesn't. Once he grabbed an unlabeled bottle of cumin thinking it was cinnamon. . .

[SuzySushi]

It seems like it's taking forever to upload all the photos I took today, but wanted to recap at least part of our food-packed day.

Michael and I both belong to Mensa, the international high-IQ society. Today we went to their weekly luncheon, held every Tuesday at Stuart Anderson's Cattle Company, a chain steakhouse at Ward Warehouse in Honolulu. During the school year, Michael usually attends the luncheon by himself because someone needs to be home when Wendy comes home from school. Besides which, steakhouses aren't really my thing -- I show up occasionally for the socializing, but wouldn't want to dine there every week.

With its Western motif and dark wood interior, Cattle Company could be anywhere on the mainland.



Or could it? Not with an ocean view like this!



Today the "lunch bunch" drew seven people, us included. Michael and I shared an appetizer platter as our meal: stuffed potato skins, shrimp cocktail, and Buffalo chicken strips (we requested more potato skins instead of the fried zucchini).



Children aren't invited to the luncheon, so we dropped Wendy off at Daniel's store on the way over. As I mentioned, he's a tattoo artist and body piercer and he owns a shop in Chinatown. She ate dim sum for lunch -- her favorite har gau and char shu bau (which I would've preferred for my own lunch!) -- then Daniel took her shopping and she bought this cheongsam with her Christmas money. She looks so sophisticated -- 10 going on 23.



The decor of Daniel's store is reminiscent of 1930s Shanghai. This is the waiting room.



Michael loves Chinese wedding cakes, so we made a quick stop at Shung Chong Yuein, a traditional Chinese bakery on Maunakea Street, in the heart of Chinatown.



The store looks very old-fashioned, which adds to its appeal.



In the window are candied fruits and vegetables -- mango, ginger, lotus root, squash, water chestnuts, yams -- along with peanut and macadamia nut candies.



We bought several kinds of cakes and sweets (clockwise from the top): a large Chinese wedding cake filled with candied fruit (?), a banana-flavored mochi roll, a fruitcake, a mochi cake filled with what I believe is two types of sweet bean pastes -- black beans and white beans, and finally a piece of macadamia nut candy.



It's after 1:00 a.m. and I'm fading fast -- to be continued tomorrow.

[Pan]

I envy you for having access to a shop with artisanal Chinese candied fruits and such. Do you get them much? I love candied lotus root and lotus seed. I also love candied yellow haw, which I got when I was in Beijing, and pingguofu - candied apples, which I used to get in Malaysia, imported from China in the 70s, but can't find anymore. That same department store used to have delicious candied pears and cherries, too. I can't find those, either.

I love the cheongsam, too.

[mochihead]

oh oh oh oh oh! That's my favorite candy & pastries shop in Chinatown! When we go to Honolulu, we always have to stop there to pick up stuff. There used to be a faboo char siu and roast duck place, which the name escpaes me right now, but someone told me they closed down. :(

Don't you love the fish market? Where do you like to get your dim sum from? I love Legends, but if I want to go cheaper, there's Sea Fortune. Or is it called Golden Palace? I can never remember which is the current name for it.

[SuzySushi]

Good Wednesday morning!

Fragrant papaya for breakfast. Before moving to Hawaii, I used to wonder what all the fuss about papayas and mangos was about, because the ones we got in New York were stringy, underripe, and flavorless.

Now I know! (Mangos aren't in season now, or I'd show you those, too.)



To answer a few questions. . .

Pan: we sometimes buy Chinese candied fruit, but not that often. My husband and daughter really shouldn't be eating it because it's so full of sugar. . . and you can't eat just one! I've never seen candied apples or candied haw, although some shops here carry the rolls of haw flakes, which I love. I should take you guys to a crack seed store!

Mochihead: yes, that bakery is the only place to go! -- except at the Moon Festival, when a couple of restaurants (Legend and Hee Hing, to name two) sell mooncakes.

I'm not sure which char siu and roast duck place you're talking about -- we usually get ours at Duck Lee at Market City in Kapahulu. Closer to home, there's also a good place, whose name escapes me, in the food court of the Pearl Highlands shopping center, by Sam's Club. The latter also sells whole roast pigs, in case you're interested!

I don't know if I'll get a chance to do dim sum during this blog -- again, so many meals, so little time! -- but our favorite places are Legend (and their accompanying Buddhist Vegetarian Restaurant just across the hall) and Panda Cuisine on Keeaumoku. We used to love Eastern Garden, and the staff knew us well there, but they're out of business now. The owners have opened a fancier new restaurant on Alakea Street, where you order the dim sum off the menu instead of choosing from carts. I haven't tried it yet. Wendy judges the quality of dim sum places by whether they make fresh mango pudding (or use an artificial mix)!

She's a real dim sum connossieur. She used to be known as "the haole [caucasian] har gau girl" -- when she was two years old, she took a liking to har gau -- delicate shrimp dumplings in translucent wheat starch wrappers -- and flagged down a waitress to reorder them!

[Edited for typo]

Edited by SuzySushi, 28 December 2006 - 04:30 AM.

[SuzySushi]

And now back to our regularly scheduled blog. Yesterday afternoon was a good time to shop at Marukai, a Japanese warehouse club whose name translates to "circle club." Besides a chain of stores in Japan, Marukai has four stores in California, and two in Honolulu. Membership costs just $10 a year. Marukai also owns a chain of three 99¢ stores on Oahu where membership is not required -- they offer a great assortment of Japanese housewares.

Marukai warehouse club. The main store is in an industrial area.



Marukai carries a huge selection of Japanese groceries and fresh seafood, meat, and produce. The seafood includes sashimi-grade products flown in from Japan. There are premium meats like American Wagyu beef and Canadian Berkshire pork; and air-flown Japanese produce such as myoga (a ginger-like root with a more delicate taste). There's also a Japanese housewares department, Japanese dry goods, and a sizeable selection of Filipino and Korean products. The interior has a bazaar-like atmosphere, especially when it's decked out for New Year's.

Here's the housewares department



Japanese New Year's is a big holiday in Hawaii. Many of the Japanese-Americans living here are second, third, or even fourth generation, but a lot of families follow traditions that have fallen by the wayside in modern Japan. Even mainstream supermarkets carry the makings for kadomatsu, traditional arrangements of pine sprigs and bamboo stalks that are displayed near the entrance to the house; and kagami mochi, decorations made of two stacked glutinous rice cakes.

Traditionally, kagami mochi are topped with a whole mandarin orange. Ours, which we picked up a few weeks ago at another Japanese supermarket, is topped with a plastic maneki neko, a stylized "beckoning cat" figurine that symbolizes good fortune.



Here is the kagami mochi display in the other market. Don Quijote is the name of a Japanese supermarket chain. They recently bought out the Hawaii supermarkets that had been owned by Daiei – another Japanese supermarket chain that is now in financial trouble. In the upper right, you can see Don Quijote's mascot -- oddly, a penguin instead of a horse or donkey -- named Don-Pen.



In recent years, as fewer people want to spend days cooking all the traditional Japanese specialty foods for New Year's, the Japanese markets here have begun offering prepared osechi ryori sets. Presented in elegant tiered lacquer boxes called jubako, these sets are extremely pricey. Shirokiya, a Japanese department store in Ala Moana Center (Honolulu's largest shopping center) advertised "Deluxe Sets" with three tiers serving three to five people for $195, and two-tier "Couple's Sets" for $135! They're available by special-order only, limited to the first 200 orders. You can see an ad for Shirokiya's osechi ryori here.

That's just sliiiiiiiiiiiightly out of our price range ( ). Besides which I already own a jubako, and we don't like some of the foods (such as kazunoko -- herring roe -- which to my palate tastes too salty and bitter) even if you are supposed to eat them for good luck! So I picked up a few prepared foods we like at Marukai and we'll put together our own osechi along with other foods that I'll cook:

Takenoko kombu -- bamboo shoots and kelp seaweed



Ajitsuke kinpira renkon -- seasoned lotus root. In China and Japan, lotus root symbolizes the Buddhist wheel of life. It looks pretty and tastes good, too.



Onigara yaki -- skewers of small shrimp grilled in their shells. I've never had these and am curious to taste them. Shrimp and lobsters represent long life because their backs are bent, alluding to an old person.



Sansai vegetables -- a mixture of wild mountain vegetables such as fiddlehead ferns, sweet potato vines, nameko mushrooms, young bamboo shoots, and other vegetables. This isn't traditional for New Year's, but we like it. We usually eat it over rice.



Cha soba -- buckwheat noodles flavored with green tea. These are for New Year’s Eve.



The osechi ryori display. The lady in the apron and white kerchief is busy packing small plastic containers.



More osechi ryori. Doesn't this look like a bazaar?



Still more of the osechi ryori display. Here, you can see the kadomatsu (pine and bamboo decorations) -- as well as kagami mochi (stacked mochi cakes, topped with a fake mandarin orange) flanking the sign.



Sake display. These are large bottles being featured for New Year's celebrations. The white kanji character on the blue banner in the center says "sake."



Marukai's fish department. The ladies in the white kerchiefs work there. There's an old fishing boat hanging from the wall as a display. Sorry, I can't read all the red characters on the banner -- I recognize "fish" and "large" -- maybe someone who knows kanji can translate the whole phrase?



Poke display. Poke (pronounced POH-key) is a local Hawaiian seafood salad, usually made raw seafood cut in cubes or slices and mixed with seasonings such as scallions, chopped limu (a branchy, crunchy seaweed), crushed kukui nuts, soy sauce, sesame oil, chiles, or other condiments. Some types are made with cooked seafood (such as octopus) or even cubed tofu. It's very popular in Hawaii and every supermarket fish counter has a large display.



Going front to back, left to right, this picture shows Korean style hokkigai (red clams with chile seasoning), mussels, wasabi tako (wasabi-seasoned octopus), "ocean salad" (a green seaweed salad), taegu (Korean seasoned shredded codfish); hidako sumiso tako (baby octopus in a vinegar-miso dressing), hidako limu tako (baby octopus with crunchy seaweed), onion tako (octopus with chopped onions); tofu poke, and shrimp poke. The most popular types of poke use ahi, but they're not in this photo. Marukai offers about three times the poke selection shown in this picture.

One of the favorite New Year's foods in Hawaii is sashimi, especially a red fish like ahi (the Hawaiian word for maguro, yellowfin tuna). Demand for ahi during the days before New Year's drives the price of this fish sky-high. The finest grade of bluefin tuna is priced at $40.99 a pound, with the next lower grade at $29.99!

The local newspapers begin featuring "ahi alerts" several days before the end of the year. This
was the lead story in yesterday’s newspaper! (Told ya it's like a small town here. )

Trays of sashimi assortments and oysters on the half-shell.



Tai snapper from New Zealand. All the fish are facing the same direction, in proper Japanese manner.



Japanese cucumbers (these tiny ones are flown in from Japan; the ones we grow here are larger), shiso leaves, and tiny chiles



Fresh quail eggs and fresh wasabi. They're in the refrigerated case of the fish department near the sashimi.



Close-up of the fresh wasabi, air-flown from Japan



Beef sliced for sukiyaki and for shabu-shabu. Every supermarket here carries Asian-style cuts of meat.



A large selection of fresh mushrooms



Imported fresh matsutake mushrooms ($117.15 a pound!!!) and sudachi (small citrus fruits – their juice is used for seasoning foods)



Myoga, a ginger-like root



Gobo (burdock root). This batch measures almost a yard long!



Fresh taro

[SuzySushi]

We also stopped by Costco yesterday (most of y'all know what Costco looks like, right?), ostensibly to pick up some fresh asparagus for today, but they were all sold out. New Year's shopping was already in full swing and the store looked like it was stripped!

Thanks to Hawaii's strong Asian-American influence (according to the 2000 Census, Asians -- many of them third- or fourth-generation -- represent the largest proportion of State residents, about 42%), New Year's is a tremendous holiday here, and it's typically celebrated with family parties and reunions, not going out nightclubbing.

New Year's is also a tremendous time for fireworks. The popularity of New Year's fireworks here began as a traditional Chinese custom to ward off evil spirits -- but the tradition caught on with other ethnic groups as well. In Hawaii, more firecrackers are set off at New Year's than on the Fourth of July! For several years, the City & County of Honolulu -- which means all of Oahu -- restricted fireworks for health and safety reasons, and you needed a $25 permit to buy a maximum of 5,000.

This year the restrictions have been lifted, and people are really going to town. It's going to be a noisy, smoke-filled New Year's, with a haze of smoke hanging over the island, and the streets littered for days with red firecracker wrappers.

At Costco yesterday, they were already sold out of the largest fireworks assortments -- a $300 (discount price) stack in a box five feet tall!!! -- and the smaller $148 assortments were going fast!

Here's a photo I snuck of the display, under the watchful eye of a regional manager.


Luckily for us (I hope!) every condo association here in the valley bans fireworks on their property because the houses are too close to the woods.

[lancastermike]

Thanks Suzi for a Herculean effort. Those of us that have blogged know how much work it is and doing it over Christmas makes it even more impressive. I regret never having visited Hawaii. Perhaps someday we will. You have such a lovely family

Do you ever get any of the Kona coffee that they charge so much for here on the mainland and make such a big deal about? Each year I get offers to buy small amounts for high price. I always pass. Do you ever drink it?

[SuzySushi]

Tonight we're invited to a party at a friend's house. This afternoon, I'll prepare an apple crisp, spiced with candied ginger and sweetened with Splenda, for dessert.

Before the party, I wanted to tell you a little about the Hawaiian concept of family, called ohana. Ohana means "family" (as you may know if you saw the Disney movie Lilo & Stitch), but it's more than that. It means extended family, encompassing not only people who are actual relatives, but "calabash cousins" who are so close emotionally that they figuratively drank out of the same calabash (gourd bowl) as you did as children.

These friends we're seeing tonight -- along with Mike and Ginny's family, who will also be at tonight's party -- are our ohana, in the absence of any of us having other actual relatives living here. We three families get together for just about every major holiday celebration -- Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, Memorial Day, July 4th, Labor Day -- for either a meal at one of our homes, or a beach or park picnic.

Another Hawaiian family concept is hanai, which means "adopted." In old Hawaii, there was a tradition of informal adoption, whereby children were given away to be loved and reared by someone other than their natural parents, often to their grandparents or a childless relative. In practice, hanai today is a verbal shortcut to define the warmth of any fostering relationship. For instance, one of Wendy's friends (who sadly has moved off-island) used to spend so much time at our house that she became our hanai daughter. (I'm an earth mother anyway!) Hanai can be used to refer to the foster parent, the child, or the process.

Edited by SuzySushi, 27 December 2006 - 06:21 PM.

[SuzySushi]

Thanks Suzi for a Herculean effort. Those of us that have blogged know how much work it is and doing it over Christmas makes it even more impressive. I regret never having visited Hawaii.  Perhaps someday we will.  You have such a lovely family

Do you ever get any of the Kona coffee that they charge so much for here on the mainland and make such a big deal about?  Each year I get offers to buy small amounts for high price.  I always pass. Do you ever drink it?

Thanks, Mike! I didn't really know how much I was taking on! It's not the chronicling in words that's hard -- it's posting the photos.

Nope, sorry to say I do not drink Kona coffee. I find it too mild (as well as too expensive.) I like to buy and support local products, but that's not one of them. The coffee I drink is roasted in Hawaii, but grown elsewhere.

[tamiam]

Thanks for blogging SuzySushi. It has been so fun to see your family celebrate together, and to see how you have incorporated dietary restrictions into a life that still revolves around good eating.

We stayed near Kapolei a few months ago and loved it. Our biggest frustration was wanting to buy all the wonderful produce and seafood in the Chinatown markets, but not having a kitchen to cook in. Still we managed to eat well, to enjoy pineapple and fresh cold coconut almost every day. Now I want to go back and visit Marukai, as well as more Chinese and Japanese restaurants.

[mochihead]

Aargh! Don Quijote! I miss them when they were Daiei. I went into sensory overload with all of the vines, flowers, penguins, and other decorations all over the store!

Hee hee... haole har gao girl. :D

Is it true that they're also closing the 99 Ranch Market?

Wow! You eat haw flakes! Yay! But, but, but... no kazunoko? Ah, well. More for me to eat! :D

[Hiroyuki]

THANKS FOR ALL THE PHOTOS, SuzuSushi! Fascinating!

Although some characters are too blurry to read, I can tell that at leat two of the sake on display are from Niigata:
Kubota 久保田
and
Kikusui 菊水

Sake display. These are large bottles being featured for New Year's celebrations. The white kanji character on the blue banner in the center says "sake."

Marukai's fish department. The ladies in the white kerchiefs work there. There's an old fishing boat hanging from the wall as a display. Sorry, I can't read all the red characters on the banner -- I recognize "fish" and "large" -- maybe someone who knows kanji can translate the whole phrase?

First, the hiragana: いきいき (ikiiki), roughly "fresh, fresh"
Second, the kanji: 鮮魚大特売 (sengyo dai tokubai)
鮮魚 Fresh fish
大　Big, great
特売 Special sale

[SuzySushi]

Aargh!  Don Quijote!  I miss them when they were Daiei.  I went into sensory  overload with all of the vines, flowers, penguins, and other decorations all over the store!

Hee hee... haole har gao girl. :D

Is it true that they're also closing the 99 Ranch Market?

Wow! You eat haw flakes!  Yay!  But, but, but... no kazunoko?  Ah, well. More for me to eat! :D

Oh no!!!! Closing Ranch 99??? I hadn't heard anything, but now will keep my ear to the ground. That'll be a real shame if it goes.

Yup. Haw flakes are addictive. But you can have my share of kazunoko. Strangely enough, the only kazunoko I liked was the stuff they used to serve at Genki Sushi, but they discontinued it because it wasn't popular enough.

[SuzySushi]

THANKS FOR ALL THE PHOTOS, SuzuSushi!  Fascinating!

Although some characters are too blurry to read, I can tell that at leat two of the sake on display are from Niigata:
Kubota 久保田
and
Kikusui 菊水

Sake display. These are large bottles being featured for New Year's celebrations. The white kanji character on the blue banner in the center says "sake."

Marukai's fish department. The ladies in the white kerchiefs work there. There's an old fishing boat hanging from the wall as a display. Sorry, I can't read all the red characters on the banner -- I recognize "fish" and "large" -- maybe someone who knows kanji can translate the whole phrase?

First, the hiragana: いきいき (ikiiki), roughly "fresh, fresh"
Second, the kanji: 鮮魚大特売 (sengyo dai tokubai)
鮮魚 Fresh fish
大　Big, great
特売 Special sale

Great!!! Thanks for translating!!!

[Domestic Goddess]

Suzy, have you ever tried cooking with Gobo (burdock root)? I always seen it here in the Korean supermarkets and always wondered how you would fix such a long root.

[SuzySushi]

BTW, after all the feasting we've been doing, last night's dinner was a simple, out-of-focus (!) salad using what little was left of the Christmas roast beef, along with locally grown lettuce, yellow and red grape tomatoes, sliced Japanese cucumber, and cilantro, sprinkled with sunflower seeds and dressed with a bottled Asian-style (soy sauce, rice vinegar, and sesame oil) salad dressing from Gyotaku, a local Japanese restaurant.

My lunch today is more leftover salad greens with some turkey that was left over from Thanksgiving (the latter had been safely ensconced in the freezer, of course).

Wendy is playing at our next-door neighbors' house and is eating lunch there. These neighbors moved in about a month ago and Wendy is delighted because they have a 9-year-old girl and a 7-year-old son. Built-in friends! The kids have been switching back and forth between houses after school and on weekends ever since.

I never used to keep salty snacks or junk food in the house (except for chocolate -- which isn't junk ), but now that Wendy's of an age that she constantly has friends over, I almost have to. The kids can go through the refrigerator in minutes, vacuuming up everything except vegetables. (In fact, if there's anything I want to put off limits, I hide it in the vegetable bin!)

[SuzySushi]

Suzy, have you ever tried cooking with Gobo (burdock root)? I always seen it here in the Korean supermarkets and always wondered how you would fix such a long root.

Yes. To prepare it for cooking, you wash it, scrubbing with a brush to get off the dirt (or you can peel it with a vegetable peeler). Then either cut it into short chunks if you're planning to cook it in a stew, or (the Japanese way), "shave" it with a knife as though you were sharpening a pencil. The shavings are stir-fried, usually with carrot shavings, for a cooked salad-y dish called kimpira. Gobo is usually seasoned with soy sauce, sugar, and maybe a little sesame oil. Some people add chili flakes to kimpira.

Gobo can also be made into pickles, but I've never made them from scratch -- we buy them ready-made.

[Domestic Goddess]

Hmmm... the kimpira sounds delish! I might try that tomorrow! Thanks for the tip Suzy! That's one less strange vegetable off my list (living in Korea has made me come up with a list of strange/unknown food items)...

[SuzySushi]

The apple crisp cooling on the stove.



Gotta go take my shower now. . . We're leaving for the party in about an hour. Our friend lives about an hour's drive away, and we don't want to get stuck in the evening rush-hour traffic.

Back later with a full report!

[Toasted]

Thank you for the pictures of your children, friends and pets. So beautiful! I love that your son wears candy canes in his ears, very festive and economical because you could just eat your earing if you get a candy craving. It's kind of like a candy necklace but for your ear. Weird and yet very cool. Best to all of you and happy New Year.

[hzrt8w]

In the window are candied fruits and vegetables -- mango, ginger, lotus root, squash, water chestnuts, yams -- along with peanut and macadamia nut candies.

These look quite familiar to me. Except for Macadamia nut candies - which are not traditional Chinese. Looks like they incorporated the local specialties as well?

We bought several kinds of cakes and sweets (clockwise from the top): a large Chinese wedding cake filled with candied fruit (?), a banana-flavored mochi roll, a fruitcake, a mochi cake filled with what I believe is two types of sweet bean pastes -- black beans and white beans, and finally a piece of macadamia nut candy.

If they follow the Chinese traditional recipes, then the filling for the wife's cake (wedding cake) would be candied Winter Melon.

[SuzySushi]

In the window are candied fruits and vegetables -- mango, ginger, lotus root, squash, water chestnuts, yams -- along with peanut and macadamia nut candies.

These look quite familiar to me. Except for Macadamia nut candies - which are not traditional Chinese. Looks like they incorporated the local specialties as well?

We bought several kinds of cakes and sweets (clockwise from the top): a large Chinese wedding cake filled with candied fruit (?), a banana-flavored mochi roll, a fruitcake, a mochi cake filled with what I believe is two types of sweet bean pastes -- black beans and white beans, and finally a piece of macadamia nut candy.

If they follow the Chinese traditional recipes, then the filling for the wife's cake (wedding cake) would be candied Winter Melon.

Yes, the macadamia candies substitute macadamias for the usual Chinese peanut candy (which they also offer).

Aha! So it's winter melon. I've been trying to identify the filling.

[purplewiz]

You've posted many gorgeous photographs of food I'd love to eat, but this one gets me in the heart. The only way I can get shiso is to grow it myself (and it does grow well here!), but there's no way I could get peppers like that without mail order. Or schlepping them back in my suitcase. My envy of your Asian markets is palpable!

Marcia.

[MarketStEl]

Traditionally, kagami mochi are topped with a whole mandarin orange. Ours, which we picked up a few weeks ago at another Japanese supermarket, is topped with a plastic maneki neko, a stylized "beckoning cat" figurine that symbolizes good fortune.

I need to get a maneki neko for my apartment!

Here is the kagami mochi display in the other market. Don Quijote is the name of a Japanese supermarket chain. They recently bought out the Hawaii supermarkets that had been owned by Daiei – another Japanese supermarket chain that is now in financial trouble. In the upper right, you can see Don Quijote's mascot -- oddly, a penguin instead of a horse or donkey -- named Don-Pen. 

Anyone know why the Japanese supermarket chain chose the famous Cervantes character for its name? Do they mean to suggest that shopping there is an exercise in futility?

I assume that there are no windmills to be seen anywhere in or near the stores.

Poke display. Poke (pronounced POH-key) is a local Hawaiian seafood salad, usually made raw seafood cut in cubes or slices and mixed with seasonings such as scallions, chopped limu (a branchy, crunchy seaweed), crushed kukui nuts, soy sauce, sesame oil, chiles, or other condiments. Some types are made with cooked seafood (such as octopus) or even cubed tofu. It's very popular in Hawaii and every supermarket fish counter has a large display.

So tell me a little of how limu is used in cooking or as a garnish. One of the jurors on my panel (see my 2d foodblog) was an IT guy for a small local manufacturer who also sold this nutritional supplement derived from limu, for which he had literature (which I still have) claiming that the seaweed had all sorts of interesting compounds in it that could help stave off diseases and improve your body's defenses, or stuff like that. I think the supplement was a beverage with the limu mixed in with fruits. It sounded intriguing, but I haven't followed up on contacting the guy about trying some. Should I?

One of the favorite New Year's foods in Hawaii is sashimi, especially a red fish like ahi (the Hawaiian word for maguro, yellowfin tuna). Demand for ahi during the days before New Year's drives the price of this fish sky-high. The finest grade of bluefin tuna is priced at $40.99 a pound, with the next lower grade at $29.99!

The local newspapers begin featuring "ahi alerts" several days before the end of the year. This
was the lead story in yesterday’s newspaper! (Told ya it's like a small town here.  )

Trays of sashimi assortments and oysters on the half-shell.

A recurring lament on the Pennsylvania board concerns the generally low quality of sushi and sashimi to be found in Philadelphia restaurants. With a very few exceptions (the now-closed Fuji Mountain in Cinnaminson, Raw near me), most of the restaurants that serve it serve only average quality fare, or so those who know tell me. I love the stuff, although I apparently make a very common American error in the way I eat it. I can only begin to imagine how much better the sushi and sashimi are in Hawaii.

Tonight we're invited to a party at a friend's house. This afternoon, I'll prepare an apple crisp, spiced with candied ginger and sweetened with Splenda, for dessert.

Before the party, I wanted to tell you a little about the Hawaiian concept of family, called ohana. Ohana means "family" (as you may know if you saw the Disney movie Lilo & Stitch), but it's more than that. It means extended family, encompassing not only people who are actual relatives, but "calabash cousins" who are so close emotionally that they figuratively drank out of the same calabash (gourd bowl) as you did as children.

These friends we're seeing tonight -- along with Mike and Ginny's family, who will also be at tonight's party -- are our ohana, in the absence of any of us having other actual relatives living here. We three families get together for just about every major holiday celebration -- Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, Memorial Day, July 4th, Labor Day -- for either a meal at one of our homes, or a beach or park picnic.

Another Hawaiian family concept is hanai, which means "adopted." In old Hawaii, there was a tradition of informal adoption, whereby children were given away to be loved and reared by someone other than their natural parents, often to their grandparents or a childless relative. In practice, hanai today is a verbal shortcut to define the warmth of any fostering relationship. For instance, one of Wendy's friends (who sadly has moved off-island) used to spend so much time at our house that she became our hanai daughter. (I'm an earth mother anyway!) Hanai can be used to refer to the foster parent, the child, or the process.

I like these Hawaiian concepts of family, with their expansive qualities -- sort of like the "play aunts" and "play uncles" that many African-American (and white Southern) children have in their extended families growing up.

Edited by MarketStEl, 28 December 2006 - 06:04 AM.

[Hiroyuki]

Anyone know why the Japanese supermarket chain chose the famous Cervantes character for its name?  Do they mean to suggest that shopping there is an exercise in futility? 

Since you asked,

既成の常識や権威に屈しないドン・キホーテのように、新しい流通業態を創造したいという願いを込めています。

They hope to create new types of distribution like Don Quixote, who does not succumb to existing concepts or authorities.
from here (JAPANESE ONLY).

Edited to add:
The authentic citrus fruit to be placed on top of kagami mochi is daidai (橙), which is homophonic to daidai (代々) (from generation to generation), as in "prosper from generation to generation". A mikan (mandarin, tangerine, satsuma, ...) is a cheap substitute.

Edited by Hiroyuki, 28 December 2006 - 06:27 AM.

[SuzySushi]

Good morning! Yes, it does rain in Hawaii -- sometimes for days and weeks on end. The winter is our rainy season. Earlier this year, we had more than a month of rain. People talked of the rains being "of Biblical proportions." In March, torrential rains caused the roof of the movie theatre complex in Kahala shopping mall (in a classy area of East Oahu) to collapse, flooding the mall's ground floor with ankle-deep water! Most of the stores were up and running within a few days, but the theatres were so badly damaged that they just reopened December 15th.

The sun is breaking through the clouds now, so we may be in luck. . . or maybe not:

We were planning to drive up to the North Shore today, but this morning's newspaper headline read "Big surf may hit 40 feet today." Not good surfing conditions -- waves that height are far too dangerous, even for professional surfers. It also means that the road will likely be bumper-to-bumper traffic with folks driving up to gawk, or the road may be completely impassable due to flooding (yes, it's that close to the ocean).

I'm going to have to think about this and discuss it with Michael. We really hadn't had a Plan "B" for today.

Meanwhile, here's a glimpse of the ocean on the South Shore, taken at Maunalua Bay yesterday evening as we were driving over to our friend's house for dinner. Maunalua Bay is a popular spot for diving and jet skiing. South Shore waves are generally flat in the winter. Not a colorful sunset, but stunning nonetheless.

[SuzySushi]

There were 15 of us at dinner last night. Besides our hostess Caryn and her three kids ages 13 to 18, there were Mike, Ginny, and Nikki, and two sets of guests from Japan -- an old friend of Caryn's, along with her son, daughter-in-law, and 3-year-old grandson; and the grown daughter of another friend, who will be living at Caryn's house for a few months while perfecting her English.

No formality here. These are close enough friends that they helped out in the kitchen.



Some of the guests at the dinner table. The kids were at another table set up nearby. Caryn is standing in the back, wearing the green shirt.



The main course was a dish normally associated with St. Patrick's Day rather than Christmas: corned beef & cabbage (or as Caryn termed it, "New England boiled dinner").

The cabbage and potatoes



The corned beef



There were also separate bowls of Brussels sprouts, carrots, and onions. Everything was delicious and everyone took second helpings.

For dessert, my apple crisp, along with a "red bean mochi pie" Mike & Ginny picked up at a supermarket on the way over. No, none of us had ever heard of it before, either! They figured that since the guests of honor are Japanese, they might like to try a local Hawaiian adaptation of Japanese ingredients.

The pie turned out to be very sweet, filled with anko (sweetened azuki bean paste) with a layer of soft mochi (a glutinous rice cake the consistency of soft taffy, without the sweetness) in between.



In a blog filled with photos of my dog, equal opportunity for Caryn's cat, all tuckered out from the big dinner!

Edited by SuzySushi, 28 December 2006 - 12:13 PM.

[mochihead]

...

So tell me a little of how limu is used in cooking or as a garnish.  One of the jurors on my panel (see my 2d foodblog) was an IT guy for a small local manufacturer who also sold this nutritional supplement derived from limu, for which he had literature (which I still have) claiming that the seaweed had all sorts of interesting compounds in it that could help stave off diseases and improve your body's defenses, or stuff like that.  I think the supplement was a beverage with the limu mixed in with fruits.  It sounded intriguing, but I haven't followed up on contacting the guy about trying some.  Should I?

Limu & ogo are awesome! You can add it to almost anything you want. Like Suzy said, you can have it poke, but it's also good in miso soup, salads, namasu, etc.

SuzySushi: Azuki pie?! Is that what happens when you leave manju and mochi in dark room by themselves? :D Did you enjoy eating it? What did the Japanese guests think of it? Hiroyuki, is that something that you may actually have in Japan?