A Honolulu Halloween

Come, oh, Labor Day or so, all our local stores started featuring Halloween-wares. Maybe that does not seem so different than 'back home", but, as Liz pointed out, this is a place where missionaries came early and worked hard to eradicate all worship of spirits and multiple gods, etc.

So, it is a bit interesting that Halloween is a such a big deal here.

Many of you were asking, "What will your kids be for Halloween"? We were asking that, too, and we got performance artists in a manner of speaking:


















We got one "Abby Montana", and one Joker-like Zachary. They each had fun, as they have friends with whom they were able to go around trick or treating.

That was Sunday evening, but there was also Sunday AM at Zach's soccer game - no, Zach could not dress up, but Liz and Abby did (Steve had to coach). You see, here, when parents supply "snacks" for their kid's soccer game, it is NOT simply orange slices at half-time and donuts at the end.

No ... it is a full blown, four course meal. No one bothers with half-time snacks. Apparently, the feeling is that the kids can do with just water at the break.

But, toward the end of the game, the parents break out the collapsible tables, and all the necessary accoutrements.

So, given that the Sunday game for which we were one of the snack-supplying parents landed on Halloween, we decided that our contribution had to have a special Halloween flavor.

Well, for one, Mummy Dogs. Yes, that's right; don't they look treaty?



















A particularly frightening one - just staring back up at you, yeah? I do not think this one went down all that easily......
















It just takes some dough, some dogs, and two earnest cooks wrapping them up for a quick bake, and ....















Voila, a platter of mummies!
















But, that was not all we decided to make for our post-soccer game goodies. I was the brains behind this one (stolen recipes from the Web, not an original idea here).

To prepare brains, like below ....


















You must start with a nice round watermelon, and peel it. Yes, peel it (I never had done this before.......). It seemed so, un-carrot-like:














Then, take your favorite CARVING knife ..... with deft handling, incisive manipulations and not too much surgical precision ...















You got something to move into cold storage 'til the morrow:

















Hope you had a Happy Halloween!

Steve, Liz, Zach & Abby

Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, wonderful Spam......

October 4, 2010

There is another key Hawaiian treat we had to try, "SPAM Musubi" with the accent on the first "oo".

First .. a little interlude, to establish atmosphere ....




So, why SPAM, you might ask? Liz looked it up: During WWII, it was quite difficult to get meat in Hawai'i. The military stationed here received SPAM as part of their rations ("Meatloaf without basic training"), and then frequently traded it on the black market. Islands in and around the Pacific consume the most SPAM per capita, and recipes abound. It does not have the negative perception that it does on the mainland. Much more info can be found on the Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spam_(food)

Steve here: My cardiologist makes me post the following: "One serving of SPAM contains 50% of your daily "requirement" of saturated fats". My response is, "Dr. Dan, we sometimes do buy 'SPAM Lite' ".


And, now:

Welcome to .....
The Chef Abby Show

Starring Abby
with Assistant chef Boyardee (Liz)














The Toolkit
















Fry 'em up!















Lookin' good














A little Soy Sauce / Sugar seasoning














Meanwhile .... on the nori (wrapper), place the Musubi packing tool:














A small scoop of rice; some seasoning (Wasabi, some other goodies...); the Spam; some more seasoning; finished with another small scoop of rice




































































That says it all!















One cannot end a post on "SPAM" without this, of course:

So far behind....

I know...... it has been FOREVER.

We can promise to be better, but, that might be tough. I'll drop a few short posts to catch up (hopefully), and then get on with more current things.

Here's one from August.

We were invited for a Saturday afternoon boating. It was an invite from an acquaintance of Zach's that he met through soccer, named Tyler. He was at the time an acquaintance, but now a good friend. We did not know exactly what to expect, nor exactly what to bring.

Whoa! Way cool.

They have a house that opens out the back to a Marina; not a ton-of-boats type of marina, but a dock from their house (and each house around this island). The dock opens onto a bay (that opens to the ocean, but who needs that!). You see, they have a nice speed boat, and the pictures tell it all. What a blast!

There are the boys,Tyler (standing) Zach (to the left), and Bobby and Michael, loaded on a floating, spinning thing, towed by the boat. They are already being pulled through the boat's wake.










Gettin' wet:















So, the idea is that you stand up on this thing, and hold on (for dear life), then Uncle Tre guns the boat, and also serpentine's it, so you start 1) spinning like crazy and 2) are flying back and forth across the wake. So, it is water skiing, but with four people latched together, AND turning around as fast as you can, AND bumping up and down with the swells of the wake.

Let me give you a little better sense of this (if I can upload this.....):


Then this sequence happens:











































So, what do you do next? Scramble back on and go again, of course!

Not just the "boys" did this, of course. We even got Abby on:


The family is ready:














We've launched:
















We are spinning:















We're in the "thick" of it: