Dinners, BLAH!!! (or, it's not Julie and Julia)

So, what does one cook for the evening meal, each day every day? If you hear our kids tell it, it is, "nothing but stir fry; yuch!".

I never thought of it, but perhaps Liz and I do have a bit of a restricted repertoire. To be fair (to us), we have made various pasta dishes. And, Liz did some great things with lentils that the kids even liked.

But, there was that first Friday evening when Steve made a tofu stir fry. Then during the next week, we made chicken thighs - oh, yes, that was as a stir fry. And, then, finally, last night Liz made tofu (ooops ... again a stir fry).

It's not so much the idea of the stir fry, we think. (The "we" being Liz and Steve). But, what is "IN" the stir fry. Stir fries (spelling?) tend to have to have all those green things diced up. So the kids refuse to just dig in and eat the stir fry. They pick out the parts that they deign edible (i.e. string beans, peanuts and carrots. They eat the rice separately. They leave a lot of food on their plates. The seasonings don't seem to matter - more, less, all the same from their perspective. They look grumpy and moan. They push food around on their plates. And Zach asserts that he just really really really doesn't like tofu.

The big victory yesterday was cutting up the onion so very small and describing it (during the chopping process) as a root vegetable whose name I did not know in Chinese (true, I don't know how to say 'onion' in either Mandarin or Cantonese) that it was not recognized and removed. However, not much of the total stir fry was eaten, so in all, upon reflection, a pretty small victory.

So, push came to shove last night, and the kids rebelled.

They had had enough --
THEY'RE MAKING DINNER!

So, here is their menu for this week:
(Tuesday & Friday are "Dinner out" days, they decided. Tuesday is "to be determined", the Friday one is "Shabu Shabu" (so, our kids have some taste, yes?). There can be no substitutions. If you don't like macaroni and cheese or if you don't want scrambled eggs for dinner, you still need to eat it. You cannot make yourself a peanut butter and jelly sandwhich.

You can barely make out on the left side an arrow switching Penne pasta and rice&beans so that the burritos and rice&beans are not on adjacent evenings because they knew that they were too similar to one another. We were also told that there would be some vegetable served at every meal.

Finally, a shopping list was generated after much peering in the pantry and refrigerator. Because we have many of the items necessary for these menus on hand, the shopping list for the week was:
one can of black beans
ice cream
chocolate sauce
sprinkles
maraschino cherries

Well...today was Monday, so here was their first decision point:














They took turns cooking it up:















Don't forget to add the "special sauce"!














How shall we set our table?














The vegetable dish (cucumber)....















Happy faces during our meal:















BUT ....
There was a problem.

.....the Mac N Cheese box contained all of about 7.5 oz, leaving some diners a might bit HUNGRY afterwards and requiring a preview trial of Saturday's burrito meal (ZD) as well as a late evening cheese sandwhich (SD):



















The evening ended, after a hard fought game of hearts, with some chocolate ice cream, decorated with various jimmies and chocolate sauce. How can u go wrong.......














Where was Liz during all this? Out watching coral spawn. Missed the whole meal. Will post pictures of the coral and the Hawaiian Institute of Marine Biology ASAP.

From Liz:
Trip to the Honolulu Zoo on Tuesday AM, at Abby's suggestion. We forgot the camera, so no pictures of us with the animals - the zoo was probably quite like other zoos that you have visited although smaller in scale and so I am not going to search around for someone else's pictures to post of animals at the Honolulu Zoo. We rushed through what is supposed to be the most interesting part, the tropical birds b/c we had to get Zachary to his orientation class at Punahou. We became members, so we will start in that direction next time. The African Savanna section was pretty nice, with giraffes, rhinos and zebras all roaming around together in one big enclosure. And a good number of non-human primates, which are always interesting although sometimes a bit sad to see.

Also saw most beautiful tree - rainbow eucalyptus - with very amazing bark that looks like something from Dr. Seuss (this photo from Lisa Jacobs at the Miami Zoo, found at this site):


My big adventure of the day, also with no original photographs to document it, was my trip to collect Hawaiian bobtail squid. A biologist that I know at UConn works on them, and came to Hawai'i to collect some for his research. I could have gone last week, but b/c of the tides, I would have had to go at around 2AM. Not as enjoyable. I offered to help collect b/c I though that it would be fun, and it was. I would definitely do this again. In addition to the squid, we saw a fairly good sized octopus (30 cm?), some small fish and a few small sea cucumbers.

The squid only come out after dark, and it is easiest to collect them by wading in shallow water (i.e., at low tide). So I went out last night from about 9-11PM hunting squid by flashlight (with a net and ziplock baggies) looking for this cute creatures and trying to net them quickly before they swim away or "ink" you to hide.

It is fairly challenging to find them because they are small and pretty quick. I caught two on my own and let one get away. Since there were 5 of us out and we ended up with about 16, I did reasonably OK and this was considered a "good" night. The squid are very very adorable as you can see from the picture below. The biggest ones are ~6 to 8 centimeters long and the smallest we kept were about 1.5cm.

Why do people study them? They have a symbiotic relationship with a particular species of bacteria that are bioluminescent. The bacteria produce light when they are at a high concentration, and the squid uses that light for "counter-illumination". Huh? The bacteria are in the belly of the squid (the part that faces down when the squid is swimming). The squid are predators, and swim around at night to catch their prey. When the moon is out, the squid would cast a shadow and the prey would likely be able to detect the shadow and swim to safety. The light made by the bacteria illuminates the area under the squid so no shadow is made and the squid is likely a much more successful hunter.

The relationship between the squid and the bacteria is VERY specific. The squid come into contact with many many bacteria after they hatch from their egg but only let this particular species into the special organ that is colonized by the bacteria - even though it is less than 0.1% of the bacteria in the seawater. People are interested in understanding how the bacteria and squid recognize one another and how the squid discriminates so well to only let this species in. Also, once the bacteria are inside the squid, they induce changes in the squid so that other bacteria (even the right kind) can't get in - the bacteria that the young squid takes up stay with it for the rest of its life.

Here are a few pictures from Margaret McFall-Ngai's website. She has been a pioneer in research with this critter and has a website that is chock full of information if you want to learn more (McFall-Ngai website) and also these well-written stories summarizing some of their findings (Science Daily#1 , #2, #3).

The "Uke"

So, it is not "Yewk-elele" but "Ookelele", by the way. Among the things learned at Sunday's (40th) Ukulele Festival.

Cultures mesh -- brought to these islands by Portuguese immigrants (as the "Cavaquinho", ukulele is mostly translated as deriving from "jumping flea" - as one's fingers move during playing), these two have taken to the Uke:














Z & A get a quick lesson.
We, of course, buy a Ukelee for home - what Hawaiian home goes without?
And ...... we have:










Just a moment for an outfit change.......

And, we now present the "DiNardo Kamali'i"

How soon will we be getting surfing lesson for Zach? (And, for Liz!)

























Zach took to it this run, and had a lot of subsequent body boarding success. He did not quite get up on the board yet - but that cannot be far behind.

Then, LIZ - whoa, the expert.....ah, ..... oops

























.....where did she go?

Defining terms

What I have learned: It is well worth the time to look up definitions, rather than just trying to bluster through as people talk (or while reading maps and guidebooks, especailly while reading maps and guidebooks).

So, here goes:
Archipelago: From Italian (Latin?) "Chief Sea"; a stretch of islands within a sea, or a sea studded with islands. Interesting (to me) no one defined it as an "arc" of islands, which is what I would have said. That said, or not said, Hawai'i is an archipelago.
Oh, 2 things: one, in the spelling I used, "Hawai'i", the apostraphe is because you are supposed to articulate a "glottal stop" between the i and the i. Try that.
And, two, you think of Hawai'i as about six, maybe eight islands, but there are a lot more, many of which are almost eroded, at least far enough that they are somewhat / mostly submerged. And the archipelago (look it up) stretches some 1500 or more miles from the northwest to the southeast. The islands you (and I ) know as Hawai'i are more toward the sourheast, and there is even a new one being formed, even as we write, more southeast of these visible ones.

Windward / Leeward - the archaic pronunciation was Winnerd / Leward, but is now the more obvious pronunciation (and the only one this Brooklyn boy could use).
Oh, the definitions: well, the words can apply to different situations, like the sides of ship, but what I care about is how the words refer to the island "I am living on". In that case, Windward is the side of the island subject to prevailing winds, and Leeward is, well, that is obvious now isn't it?

While we're about the coast, "Makai" means toward the ocean while"Mauka" means, well, not toward the ocean, and since these are volcanic islands (more later on that) that means toward the mountains.

Ah, those moutains, which are not mountains (more, much later on that). We are in Honolulu, and living a bit "up" one of the valleys that cut down from this range toward the sea (I mean, "Makai" - look it up). There are trade winds (I learned about them in 4th grade) that flow from the northeast (toward the southwest). These winds come off the water, and are quite, well, wet. That air hits the (windward!) coastal range, rises up the not-too-tall peaks, where it is cooler - and voila, rain. Once you are more leeward (look it up) than the peaks, there is a rain shadow - an area of less and less precipitation, as the air has lost its moisture.

So, let's review: water is dumped a lot and often on the coastal ranges, which is in our back yard (sometimes, quite literally), and then further down into Honolulu (the center of the city) and the south coast beach (Waikiki), it is much drier (& hotter). Hence, the pictures that I think are posted of our walk up to Manoa Falls show that it was a bit wet for our trek. That trek was back up from the part of the valley we live in, up higher further into the range, and hence wet.

There are more words to learn, more geography an weather to live. But, that for another psot.

We have posted some pictures with previous posts for those of you who have wanted to see more images!

By Liz and Abby: We hiked up Diamond head. It was really really FUN:):):):):)!!!!!!:):)!!:)!:)! You drive through the wall of the crater and into the middle - you can see that in the picture where the cars are parked. And then you hike up the inside face with a lot of switchbacks - very hot, and dry climb.

The number of times we heard people exclaim to one another in a self-congratulatory way - something along the lines of - it's hot, but at least it's not noon, or something like that was pretty funny....I wonder what the people at noon say - probably congratulating themselves for not being there at 2PM when the sun has really heated up the rocks....anyway the views from the top were pretty spectacular and it was pretty cool being inside an old volcano.


Yesterday we went to The beach. See the pictures on the previous post.

Here are some pictures from the beach trip. We drove east along the southern coast to get to the beaches and then drove north a bit on the east coast , and then drove home along the Pali Highway which is along the cliffs more inland (last picture on this set). We had a great time with our new boogie boards. Zach worked hard to try to master standing up on his to ride the waves in, but no success on this front yet....

From Abby:
We have picked up the white Prius and given back the other car that we borrowed.

Yesterday we went to the Waikiki aquarium. I liked that there was a thing that you could carry with you and pressed a number and put it up to your ear and a person speaks about the thing that you were looking at. I liked the sharks that always keep their mouth open and mom liked the frogfish -it was a fish but had its fins more like legs. There was also an octopus but it was asleep.

We also went to the beach and I was kind of scared at first and so we walked around for a little. But then I went in and played and jumped in the waves. Zachary went on top of the waves, in the waves and under the waves. He was splashing a lot.

From Liz:
We also got our beds delivered today and our internet and local phone are scheduled to be turned on tomorrow! And we got our boogie boards for our next beach trip and some other water toys. I think that we will really start to feel settled now!!

We were going to do without a landline, but got a deal with the internet and so decided to get it. I also heard that it matters to people that you have an 808 number (the area code) - that it helps to get things done because you "belong". Our number is (808) 988-2313, but we are still expecting to use our cells most of the time.

This tree was at the beach in Waikiki.

From Zach:

We're all having a lot of fun here, but I miss Swarthmore a tiny bit. A lot is different from Swarthmore. It rains once a day here, and it's really windy. That's not a complaint, though. It's beautiful here. However, people off the streets have to wear protective raingear, as you can see. The palm trees bend farther than I thought, too. We have a grapefruit tree in our backyard, and we ate one all ready. it was pretty good, could have been better, though, cause it had actually fallen from the tree already. Also, we have eaten a lot of Korean and Thai and Japanese food. we finally had good, greasy, fat, American burgers and fries tonight.
We're trying to keep organized, which would probably be good for us. We have way too many closets and cabinets and drawers anyway, so.... We have been shopping and garage-sale browsing way too many times. Microwave, vacuum cleaner, tv (yay, 37" LG) and more minor stuff, like towels and cleaning stuff.
How are you guys doing back in Swarthmore?


From Abby:
Happy fourth of July! The palm trees are weird because when the wind blows one part sticks up straight while the other is going down. Also, did you know that coconuts are green at first? It is really really windy. we went to a lot of garage sales; me and Zachary play a lot of our DS; we got a tv but it does not work yet.

From Liz:

Dear Everyone,

Sorry for the long silence. We have made great progress in getting settled into our new surroundings, but still no internet at home. Not sure yet when that will happen. There is a Starbucks with free WiFi about 5 blocks from our house and so we are currently here, having some coffee and dessert. Much of our internet time has been spent poring over craigslist entries. Between craigslist, Long's drugs, Sears and Macy's we have just about gotten everything we need to feel pretty settled in. Our big deal today to me was a kitchen table and chairs, and so we are looking forward to breakfast at a table, instead of our laps. The big deal yesterday was a TV - however, we have no reception because we do not have an aerial or cable, but we had shipped the Wii, so there has been some good use of the TV in that way. Getting the house set up has consumed almost all of our time so far, but now I think that we can start exploring a bit more starting in the next few days.

Our house is in a terrific location. There is a small strip mall with a grocery store, the Long's drugstore and a bunch of restaurants, a bakery and a few dessert places nearby. It also has great great breezes, and is probably 10 degrees cooler than the city and beaches.

Some pictures to go with this text: The scab that clearly looks like the Hawaiian islands, a shot from the hike to Manoa falls, us at our kitchen table (using the timer) and a meal in our backyard.

Abby wants to tell you about our hike today, but right now she is so full from dinner (Korean bbq burger and fries) and part of a scone at Starbucks that she can't think straight. We have cooked a bit at home, but have been eating out a bunch as well - exploring our neighborhood restaurants. The highlight today for me was some spicy tuna poke (po-keh) at a strip mall near where we bought our kitchen table and a desk. Poke is an Asian version of ceviche - and this place was really great. A little far away, but possibly worth a return trip....

We did about a 1.5 mile hike that is a few miles from our house to Manoa Falls - a very skinny waterfall that drops about 135 feet. It was fun - a bit crowded on the trail likely b/c of the July 4th/5th holiday, but very pretty. It has been "unusually" (this is what everyone is saying; how would I know?!?) rainy for the past week and so the trail was super muddy but that did not take away from the fun at all. According to our lonely planet guide, the hike is one of Barack Obama's favorites as he grew up not too far away.

We have seen lots and lots of rainbows, including some double ones - I have seen more in the past week than probably my whole entire life before this.

Another highlight was last night, when we drove up a mountain side to look down over the city to see the fireworks. It was a little surreal to see the show without any of the noise, but beautiful and a fun adventure.

Hope that your long weekend was relaxing and fun as well.