The Hawaii Traveler

If you’ve read or heard anything about the culinary customs of old Hawai’i, you’ve no doubt heard about poi.
What it is:
Poi is a starch made from taro root, breadfruit, or sweet potato that has been cooked, pounded into a paste, and fermented.  It’s usually eaten with the fingers, and should accompany some other serving, such as meat.
Poi was used in the old days as a way to make more palatable meats cured and preserved with salt in the absence of refrigeration.  Today it’s used as a thickener for Hawaiian foods, such as soups, stews, and sauces.
The food poi is sometimes …read more

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Spam katsu, a traditional Japanese dish, with a modern twist
 
You may have heard about Spam Jam on Oahu, and the Hawaiian obsession with beef jerky. And now there’s an entire cookbook dedicated to Hawaiian recipes involving everyone’s favorite pork product (you know you love it): Spam. In Muriel Miura’s Hawaii Cooks With Spam, now you can join the islands in its Spam enthusiasm anytime.
Miura’s menu of Spam delicacies even include a recipe for Spam Nori Maki Sushi, which you can find at NPR, where she was interviewed. Not only are Pan-Pacific recipes honored, but you’ll find everything, …read more

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It’s the perfect prelude to the 26th Annual Hawaiian Slack Key Festival on August
17: The fourth annual Ledward Ka’apana Aloha Acoustic Workshop, hosted by the
Outrigger Waikiki on the Beach. The workshops, held August 13 to 16, 2008, are a rare opportunity to learn from four Grammy nominees and Japan’s #1 female
slack key artist, Agnes Kimura.The registration fee for the Aloha Acoustic Workshop is $700 and includes four
full days of educational workshops and music sessions. To sign up, call the
Kihoalu Foundation at 08-226-2697 or send an e-mail to kihoalufoundationinc@yahoo.com. The workshop …read more

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The first thing my husband, a New Yorker by birth, noticed about island travel was the time difference. I’m not talking about the Pacific time zone, the number of hours you deduct from your watch when you step off the plane. I’m referring to the different way that the concept of time is regarded by people so far from the rush-rush of the Big Apple and her hurried mainland sister cities.
When we went to the outfitter in Hanalei to rent kayaks, the store owner was chatting up a young couple at the window–about nothing in particular. Certainly not …read more

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