Waikiki Beach

Today was a planning/exploring day. We slept in, went for breakfast, then did some planning and then went exploring and found the beach. This is Waikiki Beach. That's Diamond Head behind John there. It was really bright and I couldn't see the screen on the camera very well, and John lost his feet.

Turns out, we're not that far from the beach, though I still think including "beach" in the name of the hotel is false advertising. It's a less than 10 minute walk, and it's so nice and warm and sunny here, with just the right amount of breeze, that walking is fun.

After we found the beach, we went back to the hotel, changed into our suits and went back to play in the ocean. As were were both actually IN the ocean, no one took any pictures of that part. We tried body surfing, but wherever we went, the waves moved over just next to where we were. I'm not kidding, it's like we killed the ocean. We swam and goofed off and then sat in the sun and dried off a bit. It's very shallow in the water. I was able to stand up with my head above the water about 200 ft offshore (John's estimate) and there were people standing up farther out that that.

On the way back to the hotel we saw lots of pretty hibiscus in different colors. We have pinky-purple hibiscus in our yard at home, but after we get back, I might try to get some of these other colors. They're so pretty! And the hummingbirds like them. And I like hummingbirds. I took pictures of them. And other pretty flowers we saw around the pool. Here's a pretty yellow hibiscus.

When we got back, we had a fun video chat with the kids, though we couldn’t get the microphone to work on their end, so we used the speaker phone setting on the cell phone and the video on the computer. It was fun to talk to them.

Right after talking to the kids, we decided we were hungry. We had a late breakfast, so we didn’t eat lunch, just a snack in the afternoon. We ate at the Top of Waikiki Restaurant. Here’s the web site if you’re interested: http://www.topofwaikiki.com. The restaurant rotates around so you get a 360-degree view all around. Except for whatever is behind the kitchen. We had a very nice time there. I had a mahi mahi dish with risotto and grilled asparagus, which was really tasty, and John had a pasta dish with a macadamia nut pesto. We had a mango panna cotta for dessert, which we both thought was wonderful.

I took some pictures on my phone of the different views we had, but for some reason my computer won’t let me import them. It says it’s an unknown file format, even though they’re JPEG, and the computer says their JPEG. Whatever. No pictures for now.

John's going to put in some work time during these extra days so he can get some of his vacation days back to use around Christmas. But next week, he's totally on vacation. I'm planning to sit by the pool (there's a waterfall, and pretty flowers, and it's so peaceful) and read a book. Or nap. I'm not sure yet.

One thing I've noticed is that everything is open here. The shopping centers/malls don't have doors, the hallways are just open to the street, all the stores either have no doors or the doors are wide open. And there are no flies! You'd think with weather like this the place would be swarming with flies. I'm not complaining. It's desperately aggressive fly season back in California and I hate desperately aggressive fly season.

I forgot to mention, in case anyone cares, that the movie on the plane was Harry Potter 6. I watched some of it. And some of it I didn't watch. I was tired, I napped. And they fed us. We had pan-seared mahi mahi in some kind of lemony sauce, with salad and cooked spinach and what might have been mashed potatoes (it may be first class airline food, but it's still airline food). For dessert we had carrot cake, and later on, fresh baked warm chocolate chip cookies and cold milk.

I'm never going to be able to fly coach again.

A Room With A View

Here's a picture of the view from our hotel balcony. We're on the 14th floor. We have a pretty nice room in this building, we're in the corner, so we have two windows.

Aloha!

Here I am at the Honolulu Airport. Aloha!

A Hawaiian Adventure: Day 1

As may or may not have been mentioned, for our 15th anniversary, John has planned a very special trip to Hawaii. We used up all the frequent flyer miles that John has been racking up, and we’re going first class all the way! Because of that, our one week trip had to be extended from one week to eleven days. When you’re using miles, you go when you can get a seat!

The plan is to stay in Waikiki the first two nights, then we’ll stay at the timeshare resort for a week, then back to Waikiki for the last two nights.

Day one of our exciting adventure to the magical land of Hawaii. Today is mostly a travel day. Our day started early, as we got up and finished packing, taking care of last minute details, and saying good-bye to the kids and Grandma. We are very grateful to Bobby for coming out to stay with the kids, and that she could arrange her schedule to stay the extra time. We get some time away, and the kids get to spend some time one-on-one (or, really, three-on-one!) with their grandma.

Our flights have been uneventful. So far, we flew from San Francisco to Las Vegas, then Las Vegas to Los Angeles, and now we’re somewhere over the Pacific Ocean.

They’re having a competition on board today. The pilot gave us a bunch of information about the speed, distance, and the time we left, and we were to calculate the time at which we would reach the half-way point of the trip.

We calculated it would be 5:05:31 p.m., Hawaii time. We’ll see if that’s good enough to win!

Anyway, there you go. We’re heading to Hawaii.

------------------------------

(we did not win the Halfway to Hawaii contest, we were about 40 minutes too early)

------------------------------

Hours later. . .

Well, we’re here in our hotel in Waikiki for tonight and tomorrow. Let’s just say that just because a hotel has “beach” in the name, does not mean that it’s actually ON the beach. We supposedly have a “partial ocean view”, but we’ll have to wait until the morning to see for sure. I’m guessing the ocean is the inky blackness between the buildings.

We had a long shuttle bus ride from the hotel. We were one of the last stops on a full bus that goes all around town dropping people off at hotels. It took more than an hour to get from the airport to our hotel. Bleh. But, it’s cheaper than renting a car, which we’ll do, but later on in the trip.

Since I’ve been up since 3:30 Hawaii time, I do need some sleep. I’d like to thank the neighbor’s cat for making its way into my yard and howling outside my bedroom window this morning and waking me up so I couldn’t get back to sleep.

Aloha!

Clean-Out-The-Fridge Soup

One of my new adventures in the kitchen is what I call Clean-Out-The-Fridge Soup. The kids call it "Happy Soup", though I'm not sure why. I think the name says it all. Basically, I dig through the produce drawers and see what we have and then toss it into the pot. We had this soup for dinner tonight and it was fabulous. While we were eating, we counted 10 vegetables, 6 herbs and then salt and broth. Yummy. Here's the recipe. There are no measurements. I just use what I have and pour in more broth or water if it needs more.

Clean-Out-The-Fridge Soup 08Nov2009 (you know, since it's different every time, you have to put the date)

I quart jar of tomatoes, liquid and all (home canned)

4 carrots of random size

2 yukon gold potatoes (technically not from the fridge)

3 regular russet potatoes

1 yellow onion

1 bunch of rapini (also called broccoli raab)

1 part of a bunch of spinach

1/2 head (bunch?) baby bok choy

1/2 head napa cabbage

2 turnips

green beans, snapped into bite size pieces

fresh sage, thyme, mint oregano, cilantro, parsley

3 or 4 bulbs of garlic

As for preparation, I cooked the chopped onion and garlic in some olive oil, then tossed in all the leafy green stuff with a little bit of broth and steamed them all so the leaves wouldn't be so bulky. Then I chopped up all the rest of the stuff and tossed it in with a carton of chicken broth and some water. I just took a bowl, put some water in it and poured it in. Nothing fancy. Then I went about doing other things until the veggies were tender. Then we ate it!

It was so filling, none of the kids could eat a second bowl, and they always have seconds of the soup. I had a bowl and then a little more, but couldn't eat any more. It's been an hour and a half, and I'm still full.

Anyway, that's all the excitement in my kitchen! Don't be afraid of soup, just throw some veggies, herbs and salt in a pot with some water and broth and cook it.

Variations: sometimes I'll throw in some chicken, or a can of beans, or some other canned thing if there isn't enough in the fridge to make a whole pot of soup. This soup is great in the fall when you can leave a pot of soup slowly simmering for a long time and not worry about your kitchen turning into an oven.

The CSA

Well, today we picked up our first box of produce from the CSA farm we bought a share in. We actually bought a half share, so we could test it out and see if we like it and to see how much you actually get in a share/half share. The farm is an organic farm down in Merced, and it has eggs available, too, but we didn't get the egg subscription (I'm not sure what it would take to get John to agree to pay $5.75 a dozen for eggs, even if they're fresh and the chickens are free to roam the farm, as chickens should be, but we'll see).

The half share is about $15 per week, and I spend a lot more than that a week on produce. I do think that I would have spent about that amount on the same amount of produce at the store, and that's not even the organic stuff at the store. So, just on bulk alone, it's a good price, but then if you take into account it's organic and fresh picked, it's a real deal.

I definitely think a half share will not be nearly enough. A half share is supposed to be enough for two adults for a week. Hm, maybe, but it's definitely not enough for us. It might last through the weekend.

But, we did get some good-looking stuff! The box had in it:

• Radishes of various colors, with greens attached (so, for me that counts for two different veggies)
• A big bunch of spinach. I think we can do lasagna and still have some left.
• Bell peppers. They're small and there was one orange, two green and a purple one.
• Cherry tomatoes. A green basket-full. Very tasty. I'd be more excited about them if I didn't have a rabid tomato plant in my garden still. But we do like tomatoes.
• A head of garlic
• A just-right sized head of red cabbage. We never seem to be able to use the whole head of the big giant ones they have at the store. This one is perfect in my opinion.
• A huge gigantic head of red leaf lettuce. It has to be twice the size of the leaf lettuce heads in the grocery store. I bet we could get a couple salads at least. The outer leaves are nice, too, so we don't have to toss them.
• Some yukon gold potatoes. Just enough for one side dish. Might be small portions for all five of us.
• A pomegranate.
  

This stuff was all picked fresh recently, most of it this morning. It smells like garden-grown produce. Which is how food should smell.

We steamed the radishes for dinner tonight and the kids ate every bit of them. They don't like them raw, they think they're too hot. I had them each take a nibble off of them before we cooked them and they all hated them. After steaming, they tasted a lot like broccoli and cauliflower, but none of the heat. Perfect. Two of the kids also had lettuce on their sandwiches.

I'm thinking we'll have stir-fry with the peppers and the lone radish that escaped (found it in the box after dinner) and maybe toss in some spinach and some of the cabbage.

This weekend they're having a open house down on the farm so you can meet the farmer and see the farm. They're also serving lunch. We're going. Soup and salad made from their produce and homemade bread? Can't beat that. John was hesitant until I mentioned the lunch. It's going to interrupt our applesauce marathon planned for Saturday, but how often can you visit the farm and see where your food grows? Well, for this farm, twice a year, but aside from that.

The pick-up location for the produce is at a health food (vegan/vegetarian/natural remedy) shop downtown. Turns out, we know the owners of the shop from church. They have a huge shelf about six feet high and 10-15 feet wide packed with jars of every imaginable powder, herb, spice, etc. in glass jars. It's like an old-fashioned apothecary shop! There's also a yarn shop that shares part of the store, but it's an independent shop, and I bought some double-point needles so I can finish the hat I'm working on. I'm learning to knit in the round. But that's a story for another blog post.

The kids and I went apple picking this afternoon, so in addition to the CSA box, we have three 40 lb. boxes of pink lady apples that need to be made into applesauce this weekend. We'll see how far we get with that.

Salmon Biscuits: A Recipe

Last night we were heading home from piano lessons, and I was thinking that I hadn't been shopping in a while, didn't have much on hand, and needed to have a diner plan by the time we got home. I tried to remember what was in my pantry, freezer and fridge, and all I could remember was canned salmon. And then I remembered my mom's Salmon Loaf (which may have been called Salmon Roll, but I remember it as loaf), which was basically some kind of salmon mixture inside a biscuit dough loaf. I figured I could throw something like that together quickly, make a quick sauce and heat up some leftover broccoli from the other night.

Here's what I did. I didn't measure anything really.

1-6 oz. can Trader Joe's Alaskan Pink Salmon (doesn't have the skin and bones in it, easier to work with), drained, reserve liquid
2 cereal spoon glops (that's the technical term) of mayonnaise (not too much, you're not going for a sandwich here, just enough to keep it together)
1 1/2 soup spoon glops of sweet pickle relish
medium pinch of dried dill
salt and pepper to taste
squirt of lemon juice

Mix it all up to make the filling. Then I used Bisquick (that's right, I used biscuit mix, the reduced fat kind) and made 1 1/2 recipes for biscuits. It was the end of the box and I had to use my newly reacquired algebra skills to figure out the milk ratio for whatever mix I had left in the box.

I rolled out the dough fairly thin (about 1/4 inch) and used the biggest biscuit cutter I have in my set of biscuit cutters that we all got for Christmas one year (you know which ones I'm talking about). It's about 3 1/2 inches across. It's pretty big. Anyway, I got about 10 of that size biscuit out of the dough and I put a spoonful of the salmon mix on one side of each circle.

Then I folded the other side of the biscuit over and used a fork to press it shut. They looked like little tarts.

I baked them at 375 degrees for about 15 min. I set the timer for 10 min, and they needed about another 5 min.

For the sauce, I made a roux with butter and flour, then whisked in the salmon liquid and added chicken broth because there wasn't much from the fish. Once that got going, I added some milk, but not very much, just to make it kind of creamy. I added a squirt of lemon juice, pepper, salt and dill and stirred until bubbly and thick.

There was enough for each of us to have 2 1/2 of the biscuits, and Ruby ate about one, Sam ate two whole ones, I had 2 1/2, and Squig ate the rest, which was about 4 1/2. We just had them with a side of steamed broccoli, so we probably ate more than we would have if we'd also had a starchy side. I had thought of making mashed potatoes or something to go with the sauce/gravy, but we were in a hurry.

They were so good. The kids all loved them and my non-gravy eaters had sauce on every bite.

We'll definitely be making these again.

Some other ideas I had were to put in some sour cream or cream cheese in with the salmon for a different taste. You could also do this with your favorite biscuit recipe. It seems very flexible. You could do chicken, instead, and get something like the chicken rolls made from refrigerated crescent rolls, only without the partially hydrogenated garbage they put in those.

Anyway, this is a good recipe when you need to throw something together from whatever you have on hand. We always have canned salmon on hand, and if we don't have biscuit mix, we always have the stuff to make them from scratch. If you use a smaller cutter, they would also make a nice little appetizer or finger food for a party.

I meant to take a picture of all the cute little biscuits on the pan, but we were rushing to eat, and I forgot.

They really were cute, though.