Thursday, October 3, 2019

Maui Trip

We have been to Maui, our first time in July of 2011. Nick proposed to Alona on a beach there. We have some wonderful memories. This year, all five of us went, and also Alona's dad to help with the children. Nick had a conference to attend to, while everyone else got to explore, as much as it is possible with three small children that is.
One thing we remember very well from 2011 is the wonderful food - fresh fruit and small, diced poke in grocery stores. We also remember fresh, thick cut, unlike anywhere else calamari - We were unable to find what we had back then - the closest was Eskimo Candy, but even that was not quite what we remembered. We remember getting fresh coconuts by the side of the road for $3 and they were amazing. This time, they were all sold for $6 as the lowest we found, and honestly, the one we had was not quite ripe.
It seems that times have changed and the food has along with it.
We were shocked to find that the best fish, really, was the sashimi we found at Costco. The poke at costco is NOT as good as the Times Food mart poke - Do NOT do salmon, but rather the ginger wasabi ahi was the best one that we tried. We tried poke at the Ohana restaurant in Kihei, but it was WAAAAY too sweet (we tried the trio) and not very good. We also tried the calamari from there, and again, it was not at all what we expected.
We had food at Da Kitchen, that was pretty good, although honestly, our food here in Albuquerque is better.
Kaspian discovered Spam Musibi and loved it! The best ones were the simplest ones for him like from ABC and Foodland grocery store.
Our last evening, right before our 10 PM flight, we had dinner at Poi by the Pound in Kahului, we tried the saiman and the hawaiian plate and their ice cream sundae. The poke was smaller cubed and more like what we remembered the majority of it being when we visited in 2011. The poi, still left us un-impressed. It does seem like it's more of an acquired taste.

We snorkled with Kaspian at keawakapu beach. We saw 3 sea turtles once and 2 sea turtles (although Nick saw 3) another time! It was pretty incredible.
We stayed right across from kamaole beach III.
The first few days the waves were fairly low but the weather picked up as the week went on and the water got choppier and the waves got bigger and the undercurrent was quite strong.
Orion loved getting knocked over by the wave on the shore (we held him the entire time of course!)
Astrid just enjoyed building sand castles. She also learned how to swim last week, on thursday, we went to the condo pool and she just started swimming! It was amazing! :) Now we have 2 out of 3 children swimming. Of course, she needs a lot of practice still but what she can do is pretty incredible. I am certain that she will be swimming by the end of next summer.
We looked at the tide pools at night and saw some crabs and seashells, and hermit crabs and some mudskipper type fishes.













































Thursday, August 15, 2019

Wednesday, August 14, 2019

Honey Cashew Chicken with Broccoli and Rice

Tonight was a honey cashew chicken with broccoli. It was a great recipe and we will definitely make again, but ours came out too sweet, so watch the honey amounts. It might also be that our hoisin sauce was on the much sweeter side. We used a portable burner (which we first saw at a restaurant called Nagomi, where we tried hot pot, or swish swish for the first time). This burner was able to get the wok hotter and faster, and resulted in a very pleasant stir fry. The nuts actually caramelized and were like candied nuts almost.













Ingredients:

1 lb broccoli florets
1 cup cashews
1 lb chicken breast
1 cup bell peppers or mini bell peppers, sliced
2 cups rice - prepared per cooking instructions, depending on the type of rice you use
canola oil to fry

Sauce:
2 tbs hoisin sauce
6 cloves of garlic, chopped
2 tbsp soy sauce
1 tbsp honey
sesame seeds
1 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp sesame oil

1 teaspoon corn starch
2 tbsp cold water

Directions:

1. Slice the chicken into strips or cubes, as desired. We did strips.
2. Mix together the sauce.
3. Marinate the chicken in the sauce for at least 30 minutes.
4. Remove chicken from sauce to fry in wok
5. Wok fry the chicken, using canola oil 
6. Wok fry the veggies, adding the sauce and corn starch dissolved in coldwater about halfway through to thicken it up.
7. Add cashews. 

What we liked:

It was probably the best cashew chicken we have ever had. 

What we didn't like:

Too much honey (2 tbsp) the recipe above is adjusted with less honey. 

What Kaspian thought about it:

He actually seemed to like it. 

Next time:

No changes other than the honey decrease which is reflected in the recipe above.