My Favorites in Hawaii

One more Hawaii post, because in my post on some of our meals in Hawaii I forgot to mention 2 of our very very favorites.

But first!

One of my favorite things about going to the States is the food that they have that we can't buy in Canada. This trip among other things we enjoyed:


Cheese in a can!


Maui Potato Chips. Oh these things are good. I ate them every day for the first week we were there. Then my skirt started to get tight so I had to stop.


Hello Kitty Pineapple Marshmallows. To, you know, to wash down all those potato chips.



Here's a crooked picture of Da Kitchen, which I told you about before.
Da Kitchen, Rainbow Mall, 2439 South Kihei Road, Kihei, Hawaii.
808-875-7782.


One of our top 2 favorites in Kihei was Hawaiian Moons Natural Foods, which we read about in our Hawaii book before we left. It's a health food/grocery store with very nice produce, much of it organic and/or grown in Hawaii, and an excellent salad bar. The store runs 2 salads bars daily - a hot bar featuring soups, chilies and entrees, and a cold salad bar full of everything from green salads you can top with cheese nuts and pineapple to pasta salads, tofu salads and much more. They also sell excellent desserts by the slice (like pineapple cheesecake!). We went there almost every day.
Hawaiian Moons Natural Foods, 2411 South Kihei Road, Kihei, Hawaii.
808-875-4356.


Right next to Hawaiian Moons is my #1 favorite place in Kihei - Maui Tacos. We read about it on Trip Advisor when we were looking up information on where we were staying. One of the reviews of the condo raved about Maui Taco so much we decided we'd check it out on our trip.


We loved everything about it, especially the salsa bar. My favorites were the pineapple salsa and the avocado-tomatillo salsa.


This is a mango chicken taco salad my Mom had. We ate there quite a bit, and the last 4 days we ate lunch there every day. They sell their own Maui Taco cookbook which I didn't buy and am now regretting it. Oh well, guess I'll have to go back!
Maui Tacos, 2411 South Kihei Road, Kihei, Hawaii.
808-879-5005.

Stuff We Ate

Well! We came home Sunday afternoon to a beautiful day in Calgary. Yesterday was pretty fine too, until it started to snow last night. This morning it's miserable and there's tons of snow.

So it's a perfect time to reminisce about some food we had on our holiday!

We stayed in Kihei on Maui. The town of Wailea is just down the street, and Scott and I had lunch one day at Cheeseburger Island Style.

Scott had an absolutely amazing Black N Blue Burger, which was topped with bacon and blue cheese. It was really good; I am not a fan of blue cheese but I could have eaten the whole burger myself. Now that I think about it, I also like blue cheese in salad, so maybe I am just in denial.

I had an Island Style Cheeseburger with pineapple and teriyaki sauce. It was fine, not nearly as good as Scotts.

Side dishes are extra and we split an order of fries. They weren't very good.




Just down the street from where we were staying was a Moose McGillycuddy's and Fred's. Fred's had breakfast in the mornings for $1.99 from 7-7:30.



We also went to Moose's a few times for their half price happy hour.

We took Scott, who had never been to Hawaii before, to a Luau!

There's my Dad's plate above. He's got 3 kinds of salad; green, I think coleslaw, and a really really good pickled cucumber salad. At the back of the dish is Mahi Mahi sauteed in Macadamia Nut butter, teriyaki beef, Lomi Lomi Salmon, potato salad, and everyone's favorite Kalua Pig.

Here's my plate below, I had noodle salad, the excellent cucumber salad, green salad, teriyaki beef, Kalua Pig, and rice. We also had sweet Maui onion slices and salt. It doesn't sound very good, but it was.

Hey, what's that up above our plates, in the small dish?

It's POI!


Scott tried it for the first time and like most non-Hawaiians, didn't like it. A few days later someone told us that you are supposed to use it like a condiment, not eat it like a side dish. We did not test out this theory.


I had a Chi Chi before the luau. I like them better than Pina Coladas it turns out.

We went to Lahaina one day for our Whale watching tour. We had lunch at Bubba Gumps - they have a deck overlooking the water. We watched the tour boats and cruise ships come and go, and the crabs and fish in the water. For lunch we had:

That's my Run Chicken Run salad. Again with the blue cheese!

There's my Mom and her Cobb salad.


Scott had the Fishwich which was good.


And my Dad had the garlic peel and eat shrimp - boy were they good too.


Another place we found by our condo was a little place called Da Kitchen. We had peeked in the window one day to read the menu, and Scott and I got take out one day for lunch. We weren't too hungry, so we shared a plate lunch - the Big Braddah plate with Kalua Pig and Katsu Chicken served with macaroni salad and rice. I think it was $8.50. We took it back to the room and opened it up:

It was A LOT of food. To put it into perspective we took some food out of the tray.


This fed us for both lunch and dinner that day.

A few days later we went back with my parents for more takeout. We knew the portions we going to be big, but we ordered 4 meals anyway. I think the sun must have got to us.

I had a teriyaki sandwich.

Mom had the Fish Tempura. It was HUGE.

But even HUGER was Scott's Loco Moco. That's a burger patty topped with 2 fried eggs, fried onions, mushrooms and gravy. Also served with rice and salad. You can also get that for breakfast, if you can imagine!


Here's my Dad's hand posing with his dinner, another huge meal. His Hawaiian Plate had Kalua Pork, Pork Lau Lau, Chicken Long Rice, and Lomi Lomi Salmon. ALSO with rice and salad.


We did our best to eat them all. We weren't successful, but close. Gee, I think I've figured out why all my pants are tight now.

And finally, no trip to Hawaii would be complete without Spam! On our second to last night we bbq'd hamburgers, pineapple and spam.




One more meal to tell you about that has no pictures. We took my Mom and Dad to
Ruth's Chris for dinner on their 40th Anniversary. The 2 best dishes were the calamari appetizer; thick cut calamari rings lightly battered and deep fried, then tossed with a sweet and spicy sauce, and the creamed spinach. I plan on attempting to make both at home soon.

PS - Something's afoot over at WCC! Click here to find out more.

Plate Lunch and Surfing Goats

Aloha again and Mahalo for all your comments on my last post. My toes are much much better now, thanks.

Maui is 3 hours behind Calgary time and I am stuck somewhere in between. It's 6:00 in the morning and I am sitting on the deck listening to the doves coo and watching the ocean. I don't want to leave, ever!

Today I want to quickly (because I have to go get ready for breakfast, it's now after 7) tell you about 2 things we did the other day; ate a plate lunch and went to a dairy.

Plate lunches are very common in Hawaii and are often sold in stands on the side of the roads going to tourist attractions as well as in restaurants. We came across one Saturday morning in the parking lot of Long's Drug Store. They had a big barbecue set up and had started the chickens on the spit.


We just happened to be driving by again at lunch and it smelled so good, we had to eat there. They had 3 items available - a whole chicken to take home for $8.50, a plate lunch consisting of 1/2 a chicken, 2 scoops of rice and 1 scoop of corn for $7.00 or a mini plate lunch of 1/4 chicken, 1 scoop of rice and 1 scoop of corn for $5.00. We ordered 2 minis and they pulled a rack of chickens off the bbq to get us some nice hot chicken.


They didn't have any tables or anything, in fact everyone else in line was buying the whole chickens to take home. So we sprinkled our rice with soy sauce from the bottle next to the cash register and plopped down on the grass with our food.


The chicken was so good! Crispy on the outside and juicy on the inside. Here's to hoping we come across more plate lunches this week.


That same day we drove out to The Surfing Goat Dairy which we had found via the Hippy Gourmet website before we left Calgary.


There wasn't much to it and the 2 people there weren't exactly chatty. There appeared to be tours available, but because we had gotten lost twice on the way there (some roads are not marked at all in the interior) we didn't have time to ask about them. We looked at the goats


and checked out the cheeses.


They only let us sample TWO cheeses which I thought was a bit chintzy. We drove out to the middle of nowhere for Pete's sake. Let people sample more cheeses and perhaps they'll buy more.


We sampled the Mandalay and the Ole and bought the Mandalay and the Tzatziki. The Mandalay is wonderful, made with apple bananas and curry for $7.00 and the Tzatziki had cucumber and garlic and was $8.00. When we got back to town we got some freshly made olive bread and had a snack of bread and cheese and pineapple chunks.

It's now after 8 and I'm starving! Have a great day.

Aloha, part one

Hello there! We are having a great time in Hawaii. Our internet access is better than we thought, so I may post one or two more times before we go home (go home! sob). But for now I want to share this picture that Scott took today when we went whale watching. This is a picture of a whale calf playing:






What an amazing thing to see. We also swam with a turtle yesterday, and then immediatly after that I was bashed into some rocks and sprained my toes on my right foot. Good times.


Talk to you soon!

A Hui Hou*

Hello friends, sorry, there will be no Alphabet post today. I am madly running around trying to get ready for our vacation. Yep, tomorrow Scott and I am heading out to Maui!

We'll be spending the next two weeks on the beach with my Mom and Dad celebrating both Scott's birthday and my parents 40th wedding anniversary.

yes, i like pina coladas!

Because I will have limited internet opportunities over the next two weeks, I wanted to say bye, and also remind you about a couple of things for The Weekend Cookbook Challenge. Tami from running with tweezers is the host of WCC 14 and her theme is SALAD. Email Tami (runningwithtweezers AT gmail DOT com) a link to your post by March 5. Tami will have the round-up posted a few days after that and will also let you know the host and theme for WCC 15.


So goodbye for now! Stay safe and I'll see you soon.



* meaning "Until we meet again" in Hawaiian.