Sugar Candy and Malasadas

I'm currently still off in Boston for work travel, but had a few minutes to blog about some of the food we had in Hawaii. Can you believe, since the year started I have stayed in a hotel for more than 30 nights? And I will probably hit Gold status on American Airlines by next week.  It seems like deja vu of last year's traveling. 

While I was home, my mom showed me this cool Japanese sugar candy art (Amezaiku) from a 1st birthday party that she attended. A lady had a booth and was hand-shaping animal candies. These lollipops were for the kids, but then all these adults started standing in line for a candy creation. 

My mom thought that the dragon looked the coolest, so got one of those. I found the company's website online and it's called Candy Art Hawaii and saw that you can book this lady for parties. 

Another neat food event that i thought was note-worthy was that Zippy's Napoleon's Bakery started selling malasadas and they are pretty good. 

The malasadas are made to order and are really soft and yummy.  Mike's relatives told us that the malasadas' texture is still good the next day.  Mike's a malasada purist and feels that malasadas should be eaten hot and if the texture of a malasada is still good the next morning, than it is not a true malasada.  I'm not a malasada snob like Mike and I say that if I had a malasada craving and wasn't near Leonard's or Champion bakery, I'd happily purchase one from Zippy's. 

Hawaii~Aulani

During our stay in Hawaii, Mike and I were fortunate enough to stay a couple of nights at the Disney Aulani resort in Ko Olina.  When we go back home to Hawaii, we usually stay with family, so it was nice to play "tourist" and enjoy Hawaii like a visitor for a few days!.

Can you see the Mickey Mouse heads on the quilt? Isn't that cute?

The view from our room's balcony. I'm not sure if you can see it from this picture but the Aulani has a water play area for kids, a man-made lagoons, several pools, and a tube slide and water slide.  SO FUN!!!!

Our room's bathroom.  I figured that this would probably be our first and last time that we would be staying at the Aulani, so I took pictures of the room (and bathroom) to remember the experience. 

The beach on the Aulani property.    

Aulani is a beautiful resort and the staff is warm and welcoming. We were able to enjoy some of the amenities the hotel had to offer and even went to a Hawaiian storytelling late one night. I only wish that our schedule wasn't so booked, or we would have checked out more activities at the resort.

We were able to catch a beautiful Hawaiian sunset.

Thank you to my sister and her husband for hooking us up with our stay at the Aulani. They belong to the Disney Vacation Club so they were able to reserve us a room and used their points to pay for our stay (I think the cheapest rooms are $399/night)!  I heard that there are limited spots for locals, so we were lucky to check this new hotel out!

Mochi Pounding

Random story about me...growing up, I always wanted to marry into a "mochi-pounding" family. Isn't that odd?  This was not a criterion on my "must-have" list for a potential spouse; it was more of an optional added bonus.  During the week between Christmas and New Year's Eve, there would always be a news segment on TV about families gathering together to pound mochi.  It would be an all-day event in which families, friend, neighbors, and calabash aunties and uncles would all come together to pound mochi for the new year.  My immediate family is small, so I always thought it would be nice to be have large family gatherings filled with fun and laughter.

   Lucky for me, not only did I marry a nice sweet guy, I also married into a huge (at least I think it's large) extended family.  It still overwhelms me at the amount of relatives at Mike's family gatherings. Just to give you an idea, I have four cousins all of which are more than 10 years older or younger than me, so we never really hung out and could relate to each other.  Mike has eight cousins all around his age.  Okay, so back to the point of this post, no I did not end up marrying into a "mochi-pounding" family, but Mike's mom's friend hosts a mochi pounding event every year and this was the second year that Mike and I joined in the festivities. 

Mochi rice is soaked overnight and then drained. 

Here's the steamer used to steam the mochi rice. 

Mochi Equipment. 

I'm going to call this piece of equipment a "mochi extruder."  The hot sticky mass of glutinous rice is placed in this container and extrudes out and is cut into uniform pieces. 
The mochi assemblers all line up on both sides of a table and piece of the warm mochi are passed down the table.  People flatten the piece of mochi in their palms and then quickly insert a ball of filling into the mochi.  The mochi is then sealed over the filling. 

Look at that. They have the system down. This is a pan of prescooped azuki bean filling. 

The mochi is then cooled and then someone marks the mochi with colored dots to represent the different fillings. Red-azuki bean filling; Blue-Sweet Potato; Purple(?)-azuki bean and strawberry; Yellow-yellow sweet potato and coconut (I think). 

Hawaii Restaurants~Hiroshi Euroasian Tapas

One of my good friends just got married earlier this year and I was unable to fly back to Hawaii for his wedding. We decided to meet up for dinner at Hiroshi's one night while I was back on vacation. the last time I ate at Hiroshi's was back in 2005.  I remember really enjoying the meal and was impressed with Hiroshi's version of "peas and carrots" which was really a mixture of perfectly cut cubes of carrots and edamame. 

We were served these rice cakes with a wasabi dip, while we were waiting for our entrees.  They reminded me of lightly fried puff rice.  The pictures are a little dark because I did not want to disturb other dinners with the flash from my point and shoot camera.


 

My friend ordered the crispy skin moi served with Mrs.Cheng's tofu, fennel, edamame, corn, tomatoes, and hijiki in a broth. 

I ordered the panko-crusted swordfish served with roasted shitake mushrooms, zuchinni, and thai basil in a roasted garlic soy butter sauce.  I'm not sure if my taste buds have been altered since I work on some low sodium projects, but I felt that both our dishes were a bit on the salty side.  The flavors were great, but I kept reaching for my glass of water. 

We ended our meal by sharing the bananas foster dessert.  It was served with two chocolate lollipops and a vanilla dip. Yum!

Hiroshi's
500 Ala Moana Bld.
Honolulu, HI
(808)533-4476

Hawaii Restaurants~Kurukuru Sushi

I'm back...with  my better than 20/20 vision right eye and my 20/30 vision left eye (it is supposed to improve to 20/20 over the next few weeks as my eye heals). Now I can start posting about all the food that we ate while back home in Hawaii over the winter holidays. 
The first restaurant that I am highlighting is Kurukuru Sushi in the Pearl Kai Shopping Center.  We've concluded that this is our favorite cheap conveyor belt sushi restaurant on Oahu.  This place is always crowded, so we know that other people think the restaurant is good too! We got to the restaurant about 10 minutes before it opened for lunch, so that's why this is a picture of an empty restaurant.

Why do we enjoy Kurukuru so much?  It's cheap for decent quality fish and the restaurant does not skimp on the fish and toppings.  While we were driving home, we passed by a Genki Sushi and noticed that the parking lot and restaurant was not very crowded.  Hmmm....maybe people are starting to realize that kurukuru has the better deal.

Poke Bowl with half shoyu poke and half spicy tuna. I think this bowl is $7.95 or $8.95 and is topped with poke and a slice of raw tuna and salmon.  For the amount of fish in this bowl, I think it might be a better deal than ordering plates of nigiri sushi.  Oh and on this visit to Kurukuru, we found out that if you're ordering a half-half bowl, you can request to have more shoyu poke or more spicy tuna.  We ordered more spicy tuna and a guy a few tables down requested more shoyu poke.

Karaage Chicken

My favorite sushi, the natto (fermented soybean) sushi. Mmmm.....they put so much natto on the sushi  that I knock some of it off and eat with some of the rice from the poke bowl.
Kurukuru Sushi
98-199 Kamehameha Hwy
Aiea, HI 96701
(808) 484-4596

Hawaii Restaurants~Hifumi

Japanese home-cooked food.  Back when I was growing up, we would frequent Hifumi a lot for family dinners. The prices were reasonable and my grandmother enjoyed eating Japanese food.
When I first called my mom to tell her that Mike and I were coming home and wanted to go out for dinner on a Sunday night, I told her that we had wanted to go to Sansei.  She mentioned that the last time my family went there, the food was not as good as before.  I was a bit bummed out to change our restaurant plans, but in the end it was nice to have home-cooked style Japanese food on our first day back on Oahu. 

Chicken karaage and tempura teishhoku-Mike's selection

Unagi and tempura teishoku-Grandpa's selection

Chinese style fish-Mom's selection

Oyako Donburi-Rice topped with chicken, egg, and vegetables. This is the dish I ordered and shared with my mom.

 Tonkatsu (deep fried breaded pork) and tempura teishoku-Dad's selection

Hifumi Restaurant
100 North Beretania Street
Honolulu, HI 96817-4768
(808) 536-3035

Kauai

*I talked to my mom the other day and she said, "Why do you want me to read your blog when you hardly update it? I keep seeing the same post every time I go to your page."  Gee thanks mom.  Nah, it's actually quite cute; my mom is now my PR person and wants to tell her friends about the blog.

Our trip to Kauai
Here's a recap, we arrived on Kauai 1.5 hours prior to the wedding and were only on the island for less than 24 hours. The original plan was that we would arrive on Kauai by 3:30pm the day before the wedding, but that didn't happen because of our many flight shenanigans.  It's an exhausting story to tell, so if you really want to hear it, I'll post the story later on.

As soon as we landed, we picked up the rental car and drove to the Hyatt Kauai for my friend's wedding...no luggage in hand because it was lost somewhere between Dallas, Seattle, Honolulu, and Kauai.  Luckily we were staying at the same hotel as the wedding, so we took a shower and got ready for the wedding. Did we end up wearing the icky grimmy clothes that we had been stuck wearing for the past 36 hours while in the airport and airplane?  No, for some strange reason (maybe it's because of my slight OCD), I had told Mike to pack our wedding clothes in my carry-on....even though the original plan would have allowed us to arrive on Kauai the day earlier.
Needless to say, the wedding was beautiful and my friend looked gorgeous!  

The next day we were able to pick up some omiyage at the Kauai Kookie Company Outlet.  We bought some Hawaiian Hula papaya seed dressings as well as different flavors of Kauai Kookies. Our favorite is the guava cookie, but we also purchased the banzai flavor (furikake and mochi crunch inside), the passion fruit cookies, and the haupia (coconut) flavored cookies.   The last three flavors can only be bought at the outlet store and are not sold at Long's and other local stores.

We then met up with Mike's cousins at Hamura's Saimin Stand for lunch and then purchased a bunch of Hamura's saimin to give to relatives on Oahu. 

We then hopped on a plane to Honolulu and that completed our whirlwind adventure on Kauai. 

Grand Hyatt Kauai Resort and Spa
1571 Poipu Road,
Koloa, Hawaii, USA 96756
(808) 742-1234

Kauai Kookie Company
1-3529 Kaumualii Hwy
Hanapepe, Kauai, HI

Hamura's Saimin
2956 Kress St.
Lihue, HI 96766
(808)245-3271

Hawaii~Misc. Food Pictures

We've been SUPER slow with the posting of our past trips.  I guess with all our traveling all we really like to do at night and on the weekend is veg out and watch television.  Okay, that's not really true.  In our spare time we took care of bills, got the tire changed (Mike gets the credit for this), cleaned the house, washed tons of clothes from our trips, and did a bunch of household chores.  I use the term "we" lightly because now that Mike has a break from work, he's doing most of the chores.  His favorite thing to do when I come home from work is to dance around the house singing, "Michael-rellie, Michael-rellie" (think,"Cinderellie, Cinderellie").  Yes, I have to endure his singing quite often. 

We also played frisbee, got back to our gym routines, went out to dinner with friends, played billiards and cards, saw "Getting to the Greek", went to a Happy Hour followed by Dave & Busters.  Being an "old married couple" means that Mike and I were tired after all these events.  :( I guess we're not as young and fun as our single younger friends. 

Before I become too behind on Hawaii posts, here's a brief recap of some of the "must have" foods that we ate while back home in Hawaii.

Liliha Bakery's Orange Chiffon Cake. This has been my favorite cake since I was a little girl. I would ask my mom for an orange chiffon cake for my birthday (yes, I was a weird kid who did not like frosting).

Liliha Bakery's Cocoa Puffs

Leonard's Malasadas

Zippy's Original Chili with toasted cornbread. Mike's order. He loves the toasted cornbread.

Zippy's vegetarian chili with brown rice. Four times out of five, I order vegetarian chili with brown rice at Zippy's. 

Kalua pork BLT sandwich from the Pineapple Room

Hawaii Restaurants~Sansei

Way back in September, Mike, my parents and I enjoyed a dinner at Sansei located in the heart of Waikiki.
Sansei has always been one of my favorite restaurants…especially when we go for the early bird 50% off special on Sundays or Mondays. I love the flavor combinations of all the sushi there and this time since there were four of at dinner, we tried some dishes that we had never ordered before.
Miso Butterfish
Shrimp Dynamite -one of my favorite dishes. Deep-fried shrimp drizzled with a spicy sweet mayo sauce and unagi sauce.
Japanese Calamari Salad California Roll
Agedashi Tofu
Lightly fried tofu with a mirin-soy dashi
This was my choice. I will stick with my favorites.

Kalbi
Asian Shrimp Cake
This was a little bit too oily for me. It tasted good, but compared to all the other items we ordered, this was one of my least favorite.

My favorite dish at Sansei would have to be the crab and mango salad hand wrap. I love the blend of mango and sweet chili sauce. It was a slight bummer that the mango was canned, but it still tasted good. I gladly ate the extra piece without any hesitation.

I was not a big fan of the kalbi, the butterfish was good, but we felt that the portion was small for the price.
I am not sure if I’d pay the regular price for a meal at Sansei, but when the menu (except for alcohol and the specials) are half off, the meal is definitely worth it.

Sansei Seafood Restaurant and Sushi Bar
Waikiki Beach Marriot Resort and Spa
2552 Kalakaua Avenue
Honolulu, Hawaii 96815
808-931-6286