SuzySushi

Beets are also GREAT in risotto. Cook, peel, and cut into small pieces. Add them to the rice along with the liquid (beef stock is good here); they'll tint the rice pale pink. Add Parmesan cheese at the end.

Usually not, but it depends on the variety of mango. We only buy mangoes when they're in season locally, and usually wait till we find the more buttery varieties such as Keitt and Manzano. They have very few strings.

This might be totally off base, but could it be Chamorro-style "red rice" from Guam? The rice is cooked with achiote (annatto) seeds, which turns it a reddish orange. It has a mild flavor. Another "red rice" is the Japanese dish sekihan/osekihan, which is cooked with azuki beans. That comes out a purplish pink.

My husband perfected another way of pitting mangoes -- but they have to be perfectly ripe for this method. With a small, sharp knife, cut around the mango crosswise. Now take the two halves and twist in opposite directions. Voila! One half will pop off without the pit; use the knife to neatly trim the pit from the other half.

I use various sizes of plastic storage containers with tight-fitting snap-on lids. The smaller ones stack. I also can identify them by appearance, so I don't bother labeling them (but no one else can!).

Your descriptions and photos are great & I've started perusing your Blue Lotus blog... Natsukashii desu (I haven't really lived in Japan, just visited for 5 or 6 weeks at a time, but my most recent visit was in 1991! Hard to believe it's been that long.) Where do you do most of your food shopping? A couple of stray thoughts... About salmonella, although it's rare in Japan, a Japanese friend of mine contracted it there (most likely from raw eggs or chicken sashimi) and miscarried because of it. That's sort of put me off raw eggs. Re umbrella theft. Do the outlying subway stations still have "loaner" umbrellas? They did when I was visiting!

What is the coconut cream? If it's the Coco Lopez stuff meant for pina coladas, it's already sweetened and not usable for haupia at all. If the ingredients are just coconut, water, and a preservative, you can either lift off the top layer of cream or just shake it to mix and use the whole thing (the pudding will be slightly richer).

Aloha! Or should that be hajimemashite? I'm reading along, trying to get a sense of you. How about filling in some more background for those of us who don't know you?

I am not sure what "look fun" is. ← Look fun are soft rice noodle dough rolled around a (usually meat or seafood) filling. At least that's what they're called here!

What about other steamed items like look fun? What about deep-fried items like taro puffs or those pork turnover in salty glutinous rice dough (I don't know their name)? Pan-fried items like lo bok goh? I remember, fairly early on (1970s) eating dan tart and beef-blood stew (it was cut in cubes and served in a glass bowl) with a Chinese friend at dim sum place in NYC. She felt it was "traditional" at that time.

At least one food guide does this on Oahu, Matthew Gray, a former food writer & restaurant reviewer for The Honolulu Advertiser and a former personal chef, operates Hawaii Food Tours, which offers three different restaurant tours. eGullet Society member PakePorkChop used to guide once-a-month culinary walking tours of Chinatown (sponsored by the Chinese Chamber of Commerce in Hawaii), but that page on their website is down and I don't know if he's still doing them.

If you're a Costco member, Costco carries them in large boxes, for about half the single-piece retail price!

Ooooh! Marukai in Honolulu is one of my regular stops... they have two stores here, plus a 99 cent store. Well worth the $10 annual membership.

WOW! Sorry I can't be there for the festival... it sound like it will be awesome! And $8 for the plate is an absolute bargain! I'll be interested to hear how you mange to keep peace among all the different workers who haven't worked together before. I admire your gumption and skills!

Ooooh.... thanks for reviving this thread, which I hadn't seen the first and second times around! We usually bring back: -> Wine -- Once we brought in 18 bottles and didn't have to pay duty. Although we declared them, the Customs inspectors were more interested in pulling us aside for detailed agricultural inspection of the cheese we had, to make sure there weren't any forbidden kinds. Alas, most of the wine may go by the wayside with the current airline regulations on liquids. -> A bottle of chouchen (mead), preferably homemade by a friend's cousin. -> Cheese -- lots of kinds we can't get here. -> Chocolate. We once brought back a whole attache case of chocolate bars! -> Candied chestnut paste. Cheap there; exorbitant here. -> Cookies, such as butter biscuits from Bretagne. -> Mustard -- several types/brands we can't get here. -> Spices -- I'm partial to Cuisinez tout a la Marocaine from Ducros. Yes, it's a supermarket brand, but it's exceedingly tasty and I haven't been able to duplicate the flavor from scratch. -> Kitchen items such as baking pans, metric measuring utensils, those lovely French dishtowels, refrigerator magnets. -> Cooking magazines (especially special issues) and cookbooks. Before reading this thread, I hadn't realized that canned foie gras was allowed into the USA -- I thought it was illegal like canned meats. Can anyone recommend a favorite brand for future reference? Our favorite type of foie is mi-cuit but I suppose that's on the list of no-nos.

Well, she's mentioned in The United States of Arugula (which I'm reading now). It came out last year. I haven't seen any particular mentions in the past few days/weeks.

My local health food store carries Indo-European brand pomegranate molasses.

What a wonderful blog! I don't mind that you're late for Christmas and New Year's... keep on going!

Mock apple pie actually dates back to the Civil War (see http://hul.harvard.edu/publications/hul_no...306/haber.html) or (say other sites) pioneer days when fresh apples were in short supply. Obviously, it wasn't originally made with Ritz brand crackers. The recipe became popular again during World War II.

From a friend on another (non-food) message board: Now, I can almost see mixing jarred pearl onions and canned peas together. Almost. Like in the 1950s when fresh ones weren't readily available in supermarkets. But whatever possessed the recipe's creator to even try adding vanilla frosting???

I'm not sure what the philosophy behind selling fillets with skin vs. skinless is, but it seems to me like flatfish such as flounder and sole fillets are always sold skinless, as are catfish fillets. Costco sells its fresh salmon fillets skinless.

Aloha, Barb! We don't know each other... yet!... but I use exactly the same kind of toaster tongs, which I periodically replace at the Japanese 99 cent stores here. If you PM me your address, I'll pick up a pair for you next time I see them. We're about ready for a backup pair anyway.

>>>>fainting<<<< I would've thought $500 and up!!!

You can send the Highland Park to me.... that's one of the few single malts I like! Different strokes & all that!

They then list a few of the companies that supply store brands, like Alcoa (Reynolds Wrap), Birds Eye, Chicken of the Sea, Del Monte, etc. A 2003 Fortune article explained the need of heavily branded food corporations expanding into store brands as a matter of economic necessity: ← That's true to a point, but some retail chains, such as Safeway, actually have their own manufacturing facilities for their store brands. There are also some very large -- as well as small -- manufacturers that specialize in private label products.