Day 4

Today is birthday celebration day in my office building. So I had high hopes of a fanfare of delectables, given the fact that it is MY birthday month (along with three others) AND everyone knows I am on an eat local challenge. I prepared kōʻelepālau using locally grown Okinawan sweet potatoes (even that doesn't sound quite local), Mendonca coconut milk (and I wonder if they get their milk from elsewhere and just package it in cans here), and honey from Pa'auilo (which I know to be local because I cut open the hives and helped spin the honey out of it!). It was delicious. And thank goodness because besides the kōʻelepālau the only other food I could consume at our rather large spread was fried tofu. And not even with sauce on it. Even the over a dozen eggs could not be confirmed as locally spit out of a hen's you know what.
Ah, but there is a silver lining to this dark cloud. My boss, GOD BLESS HER, meant to create a nice local fruit salad but like many of us, she ran out of time. She did the next even better thing: SHE GAVE ME THE WHOLE FRUITS! IT IS LIKE A GIFT STRAIGHT FROM HEAVEN!
Check it out...

 

Can you name these fruits?

And actually the one on the far left which looks very liloko'i but is NOT, was a gift from my good friend, Bernie. I am cutting it open for lunch. 

Ka'ū oranges.

If you have these oranges right on your own island why would you even be satisfied by one that was grown all the way down in Florida, picked NOT at its peak and flown all this way. We have oranges in our own back yard. I am a changed person.

There is another angel in my  midst. A friend/colleague (I love when my colleagues are my friends) dropped off a ziploc of homemade garlic flavored sweet potato chips. I felt so luxurious eating those chips. They were huge, crunchy, and delicious. I had to use all my energy to NOT eat them all.

Dinner consisted of my homemade stewed tomatoes and Hāmākua mushrooms. Everyone else had stewed tomatoes with mango sausages and pasta. I was okay with that. Mostly.

Topped it all off with a scoop of my lilikoʻi sorbet. Kika took a taste of Hulaliʻs scoop and raced to the freezer. I think I said something like, "I thought you donʻt like lilikoʻi" and she replied something like, "I hate it". Haha!