27Nov / 2014

Happy Thanksgiving Guacamole!

Not much of a title. Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Eat your fill today. This is a post on a quick guacamole I whipped up recently. Homemade fresh salsa is so insanely delicious and easy to make that I wonder why more people don’t make it. Don’t buy that jar stuff! Make your own! It takes a bit of chopping but the end result is so worth it. How do I make my guacamole? It’s basically my salsa recipe with avocado mixed in – that’s really what guacamole is right??

I’ll share some pictures of the guacamole shaping up…and the recipe will follow.

HUGE avocado means plenty guacamole.

Here are most of the ingredients chopped and ready to go. If I had the resources, I would have flash rinsed the onion and garlic with boiling water. It helps to cut down the strong flavors that might overpower the salsa/guacamole.

Perfect avocado…

Ah yes…ready for all the tortilla chips…

Salsa/Guacamole** Recipe

3 medium tomatoes, diced
1/2 maui onion, diced
1 bunch of cilantro, leaves picked and chopped (don’t use too much of the stalks)
3 cloves of garlic, minced
1 jalapeno pepper, seeded and minced
1-2 limes, juiced (according to your taste)
salt and pepper to taste

1 large avocado, diced (if you’re making guacamole)**

After dicing onion and garlic, place in a hand-held mesh strainer and pour boiling hot water over it. Combine all ingredients together and add salt and pepper to your taste.

**Guacamole, add avocado and mash in with the rest of the ingredients (with your hands of course!) and then you have guacamole!

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25Nov / 2014

Ahi & Vegetable – Kalihi, HI

Long time no see folks! I hope you are all doing well. Everyone is probably busily getting ready for Thanksgiving huh? The past 2 weeks were probably the worst of the semester. Nonstop events and my final presentations. The presentations are all done and the bulk of the events are done. We had a craft fair this past Friday and I made my famous kimchee fried rice and holiday bowtie pasta. I don’t mean to toot my own horn but I will, the kimchee fried rice was the best yet. I paid for my own order (lol) and it was heavenly. I make some bomb fried rice. It was hard work prepping and cooking it but it was all worth it.

I hope to do some cooking soon so I can share new recipes again. I won’t be making a turkey this year, maybe some oven baked chicken tenders. Random yah? It’s okay, I’m hoping they will be delish. Quick post today to share a previous lunch from Ahi & Vegetable, they opened a fairly new shop in Kalihi. They basically specialize in seafood..and not much else. Here goes!

Sashimi Combo on Rice – $15.00

I don’t think this is on the main menu but look at that fish! Looks amazing. My coworker got this and she LOVED it. A bit pricey for lunch but did you look at the fish??

Bento B5 – $11.00

This bento comes with spicy ahi, ahi poke and BBQ chicken over rice. I think it’s a bit pricey and the cuts of fish isn’t that great. Their spicy ahi has a different texture from usual spicy ahi – it’s more of a mush than the cubes of ahi you’re used to. This bento set also comes with a miso soup. Would I get it again? Not likely….

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15Nov / 2014

Aloha Vietnamese Foods – Moilili, HI

Aloha Vietnamese Foods (aka Aloha Pho on Yelp) is located in the same lot as Sweet Home Cafe so if you plan to come during dinner, expect a struggle in finding parking. I’ve seen some great reviews for this place so I wanted to give it a try. My experience was a bit lackluster. I thought the food was okay but they were super short-staffed so service was very slow. I somehow wish that since they have such a small staff that they would lessen the tables they have in the restaurant – there’s no sense in seating so many people if you can’t keep up with their orders.

Oxtail Curry with Rice

I was really looking forward to trying this dish. I love coconut milk based curry and oxtail is always winners. How was the dish? It was good, not great. I feel like there is something missing from it. It was a bit sweet for my taste – I feel like it was missing some kind of spice. I can’t pinpoint it – but I do wish more Vietnamese restaurants had this dish so I can try different variations!

Pho – nothing special but not bad. I think the portion is a bit small. This place is all right but I’m not sure I would add it to my dining rotation…

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14Nov / 2014

Happy Halloween!

I know I know, two weeks too late. I stayed at work until about 6 pm on Halloween to finish up some things and boy was that a mistake. I sat in traffic for almost an hour. It doesn’t sound that bad, but the drive to my place is about 7-10 minutes so it was ridiculous. Every road I turned to was backed up, I should have just taken the freeway. Then I get home and it’s late, I’m cranky from traffic and it’s raining. I promised my brothers I would take them trick or treating but as we walked out – it started to pour. I let out an exasperated sigh and asked if I could just buy them candy and make it a day. They agreed. (THANK YOU LORD). So Longs got a hold of my wallet that night but it was so worth it. Anyway, just wanted to share some Halloween themed items I took part in that weekend!

Centerpiece for a Halloween Party – I thought it was very cute! Creative and cute, I loved it.

Dessert from Little Oven. Here is the graveyard ice cream sandwiches. Cute huh?

Franken Fluff – a chocolate brownie topped with homemade marshmallow fluff. Yum!

Bloody Lemonade

This was a special for the Halloween weekend. I figured it would be strawberry lemonade but it was actually lemonade with grenadine. Pretty right? How was it? Um…SWEET. Like SUPER SWEET. Like I kept adding water upon water to the drink to make it bearable. I think I must have added at least half a cup of water to make it normal.

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12Nov / 2014

Yajima-Ya – Ala Moana, HI

My co-worker offered a lunch pick-up from Yajima-Ya and I couldn’t resist. I couldn’t resist trying what Jalna tried either! For once, I didn’t feel like noodles (I must have been crazy that day) so I gave their Samurai Donburi a try!

Samurai Donburi – $8.00

You can’t go wrong with beef and kakiage on top of some great rice. As I mentioned before, their kakiage has chunks of shrimp – it’s awesome. Their meat is thinly sliced but still quite tender. Good quality food – I would get this again!

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10Nov / 2014

Ahi Assassins Fish Co. – Moilili, HI

The weather has been lovely this weekend! Last night as I walked out of a store, I actually felt windchill. Wind. Chill. It was great. Last night was positively chilly, I actually had to grab my blanket. This is fantastic. And Sunday? The nice weather continued, nice winds and not too hot temperatures. Please please please continue! So here I am, updating some posts for my blog. Yesterday was lost, there was a Law and Order Special Victims Unit marathon on and I can’t possibly study when that is going on. Today, what have I done so far? I tried to continue my presentation but can’t concentrate. I started my final paper a bit and well here I am updating my blog. Hehe…

Ahi Assassins Fish Co. has been open for less than a month and they are getting stellar reviews on Yelp. I love that they are so close to where I work so I got to give them a try for lunch. Their parking lot is a bit small but I was able to get a spot before it got busy! The most appealing part about this shop is that the owners are fishermen! How much fresher can that be? They also charge quite little to me…all good stuff! Let’s get to the pictures, shall we?

Menu as of October 2014 – Cash only!

Shoyu Garlic Ahi Poke Bowl – $7.00

I just realized I forgot to take a picture of my Spicy Ahi bowl! Good stuff, great slices of fish. The spicy ahi, it’s definitely spicier than other spicy ahi! So when they say spicy at this place, they mean it.

Pan Seared Ahi with Garlic Plate – $8.00

Yes, that’s garlic on top. Garlic garlic garlic.

Very raw inside. I like that so it’s okay.

I originally wanted to get the baked ahi stuffed crab but they were all out, that made me sad. So I settled for this, great piece of fish. Great portion but the taste was unfortunately not there. The ahi was not seasoned and I feel like they just sauteed a bunch of unseasoned garlic and put it on top. I was so disappointed that the ahi had no seasoning – I had to add a dressing to eat this meal. If I get this next time, I will probably try the furikake one.

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09Nov / 2014

711 Eats

As a college student, I have been indulging in eating out way too much. But I’ll be damned if I have time to cook anything these days. So I’ve been getting very familiar with 711’s everchanging assortment of food. I am also super sick of fast food and can’t wait to start cooking again. I can’t wait for this semester to be over…haha. But I do enjoy taking the classes and my classmates are all pretty cool this semester! They look like they are all part of the same starting core group so I would like to continue taking classes with them if I can. You know what that means…

Anyway, quick post about some foods I tried recently.

I’m a sucker for meat in gravy. Loco Moco is one of my favorite dishes. How was this? Not bad. I don’t know what the obsession with putting fried rice in these dishes are. I mean there’s so much going on up top that I don’t see a point in putting a seasoned starch underneath. I’d rather have this with white rice.

I saw this and just had to try it. The pork hash looked a lot like spam which is a bit unnatural…haha. How was it? Well I can say that it was not memorable, not great but not bad. I rather just go for the spam musubi because it’s cheaper anyway.

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07Nov / 2014

Local Boys Cafe – Kalihi, HI

Local Boys Cafe is definitely deep within the Kalihi warehouse district. I was picking up some food before heading into work and I was lucky enough to score a parking spot right in front of the shop! Very friendly crew and they definitely have a regular clientele that includes construction workers and cops. How was the experience? Well let’s talk about the food…

This is how menus have to be! So many choices, where do I start?? I spent quite a while standing there because I just didn’t know what to get!

All Meat Breakfast Special for $5.00! Isn’t that crazy? It also comes with fried rice and two eggs. Take a look at this load, luncheon meat, ham, bacon, portuguese sausage, and vienna sausage. Yes, it’s a heart attack waiting to happen but what a way to get there…lol

The fried rice from the special. Eh…the fried rice was very bland. No real flavor or toppings as you can see. I would be okay with just plain white rice.

I was generous and got my cousin lunch that day – he went for the bento. More and more bento shops are using styrofoam boxes, it’s kind of sad to see. Also, what’s gonna happen if they ban those? Wait, did they ban those containers? Anyhow, he liked it but thought the chicken was too salty. I can see why, they pour gravy over already seasoned chicken – other than that, he seemed to like it.

I went for the lau lau and beef stew combo for lunch. I figured what could go wrong?

The beef stew was good! Good flavor, not too salty or too bland.

I don’t know what what I expected with the lau lau. It was just very dry inside and the luau leaves. My gosh, that’s usually my utmost favorite part of this dish and the leaves were just so bland. It just tasted like bland unseasoned leaves. Usually the leaves take on the taste of the ingredients inside and it’s great. I did end up adding hot sauce after to help season the leaves a bit. While this plate was a bit disappointing – I still do wanna give this place one more chance!

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06Nov / 2014

Apple Juice

This post is for Jalna. I saw her post about the incredible apple juice she bought from Marukai and it had me salivating. I went to Don Quijote the next day for a usual run and ran to the juice section to look for it. Eureka I thought when I found something that looked very similar…and even more score…it was only $5.99! One dollar off! I bought it and chilled it to try later in the day. It tasted…good. Apple-y. But when I looked back at her post, I realized it was a completely different brand! So I’m thinking we didn’t get the same thing…so now I will have to keep the one she talked about in my sights because she made it sound so good!

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05Nov / 2014

The Pineapple Room – Ala Moana, HI

This was my first visit to The Pineapple Room and quite possibly my last, I really wanted it to be better but it really wasn’t. The menu and prices were definitely overrated and overpriced. Not a lot of choices – I think the only good deal would be the Loco Moco but you have to get it as part of a prix fixe menu, I wasn’t hungry enough for that. Anyhow, maybe their lunch menu is a bit better because dinner was a disappointment.

Well this was good. I enjoy this kind of bread, is this a plain focaccia? I could have had more of this…and I think we did.

Shrimp Escargot. Garlic shrimp with salt, pepper and parmesan cheese. It sounds good right? It wasn’t. It was like eating a salt lick. It was incredibly salty, the salt and parmesan cheese is too much.

Here is the bread. Half grilled and half burnt. Obviously half of the bread was inedible, not that I cared for the hard bread anyway. I used the focaccia to eat the dip…hehe.

Seared Ahi served puttanesca style over spaghetti. This dish includes portuguese sausage, tomatoes, olives, capers in a light tomato broth. Kristian enjoyed this dish a lot and the fish looks like it it was cooked on point!

Miso Garlic Butterfish – this was my entree. I enjoyed the root salad a lot, the rice was pretty good. The fish was good too. Pricey though.

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maybeitsjenny

Monthly Archives: November 2014

Happy Thanksgiving Guacamole!

Ahi & Vegetable – Kalihi, HI

Aloha Vietnamese Foods – Moilili, HI

Happy Halloween!

Yajima-Ya – Ala Moana, HI

Ahi Assassins Fish Co. – Moilili, HI

711 Eats

Local Boys Cafe – Kalihi, HI

Apple Juice

The Pineapple Room – Ala Moana, HI