Aloha !

My posting of personal recipes will be on hold until I return from a Christmas vacation in Honolulu, Hawaii. But it does not mean I would let you down ! Hawaiians love to eat. Honolulu is full of restaurants, from the hawaiian plate hole-in-the-wall to the newest trendy (and crowded) places. The islands are literally at the forefront of asian cuisines with major exposure from China, Japan, Korea, Thailand or the Philipines. It's a smorgasbord of flavors !

Here is a list of my personal favorites, in no special order:

• any poke with ahi tuna, smoked octopus, mussels, or smoked marlin (I can just eat that day and night, who needs vegetables ?)
  
• seaweed salad (I guess that would make that my vegetables, right ?)
  
• an pan (chinese brioche filled with red bean paste, great for breakfast and the after-beach snack)
  
• Ted's haupia cream pie from Ted's bakery. Huge (at least two knuckles) layer of coconut pudding crowned with whipped cream. It's rapture on a thin layer of dough!
  
• Dave's hawaiian ice creams (taro, haupia, sweet potato especially!). Too bad the Honolulu store I knew closed.
  
• Dole plantation's pineapple ice cream. No travel on Oahu is complete without a trip to the Dole plantation. Not for the maze, the garden, the koi pond, or the store (all tourist traps imo), but for the absolutely delicious pineapple ice milk. Forget the sugar, it's pure pineapple flavor, period.
  
• mochi ice cream (just had a taste of a good one at Shirokiya today, cherry-blossom flavor!)
  
• and my latest discovery, huge cream puffs from Beard Papa's ! The chocolate cream reminds me of a mild chocolate mousse. What's more fun than linking the oozing cream off your fingers (or someone else's !!!! wink, wink).
  

And for the little time left when I don't eat, I go snorkeling. Enjoy the picture !

Parrotfish at the spa, curtesy of a cleaner wrasse