I'm Back!......

Ah! A heavy sigh and a smile of contentment crosses my lips as I find my way back to blog land tonight. Thank you for being so encouraging as I took some time off to attend to things. Much has happened over the last several days and it will take me a few posts to share it all. For now, I will give you a glimpse of some of the laughter.

I have so enjoyed being around our dear friends from Hawaii. We have shopped, hiked, taken in the sights, and eaten until we couldn't even move from the table.
My husband laughs at me whenever we all get together because I am a sort of ...well chameleon I guess.
What do I mean by that? Well, when I am around our Oregon friends....I speak carefully in dialect. However when I get on the phone with my father in Texas....instantly my southern drawl comes out. Funny, I can feel it even as I type these words. But even more so, the change that comes over me when I get around the table with my family and our Japanese/Portuguese/Hawaiian heritage leaks everywhere as we talk stories......."oh bradda my English get all broke up wit island slang and da kine talk".

Last week after church we all got together for Dim Sum left overs around the dinning room table. Oh it was all so "ono" (good beyond belief). I grabbed my hubby's cell phone to shoot a couple of food shots before we ate it all.


With Hawaii being such a melting pot of culture and diversity, we have ended up having multiple names for many of the foods that we like to eat.
There is something that we all love that we have always called "ricee". It is a sponge type sweet cake that is steamed and strongly resembles white rice hard pressed together. I could eat it all day long and be so happy. After much research I have just discovered that it is really called Pak Tong Koh. It has taken me a few days to look around online but I have found some recipes that look easy and promising. Maybe after playing around a bit with the recipes I can get it to look something like the picture below.


Another favorite of mine. In Hawaii we can it Manapua but many also know it by the name Humbou (I know I am not spelling that right). It is a sweetened steamed bread with a pork meat filling on the inside. Again I could eat THIS all day and be so happy.

This was new to me. It is a fried Ponko batter on the outside and taro root on the inside. It was very good and the warm taro coated my tummy nicely.

Taro root always makes me smile. When I was a baby, I was very small at 4 pounds 9 ounces. We were stationed in Tachikawa, Japan and then later in South Dakota during those small times for me. As soon as the doctor said I could have food, my mom had Nana ship over boxes of jars of poi for me to eat and build up my strength. How I wish it wasn't such a precious Hawaiian commodity. Even today at 37 years old, I still have times when I crave a nice thick bowl of poi to fill my tummy.

Yum! Oishi! Or as we joke around the Hawaiian table "Ono-licious".

And if there is something that one person doesn't like, we all say, "Mushfeeka!" That means "good then more for me."

This is Mochi Sesame Balls. Mochi is a brown sweet bean that is used a variety of different ways. Mostly you will find it mashed and put into the center of a ball of some sort of bread as a sweet dessert.

There, have I made you hungry? There were many other things on the table as well but I always go for the carbohydrates first. After all, a girl has to have her priorities.