A Little Hawaii

Mark and I have been testing the restaurants in Japantown. After all, it is a short walk - 2.5 blocks - to the main strip. So, last night we tasted a little bit of Hawaii at Hukilau. I didn't realize that there was a unique cuisine associated with the islands. When walking through Japantown in the evening, we had noticed that the restaurant was usually packed and customers waiting on the sidewalk. Mark, in his usual fashion, checked it out online and learned a bit more about the place. It was started by three guys from Hawaii who missed the small town meals they had enjoyed at home. So they started a restaurant. Now, there are three restaurants - one in Japantown, one in San Francisco, and one in Honolulu. On their web page, they state:
"At the Hukilau, you will be transported back to your favorite "plate-lunch" restaurant in small town Hawai'i, you will hear the strummings of live Hawaiian music like "uncle" used to play at family gatherings, and you will also be able to order tropical cocktails just like at the bars on Waikiki."  Sounded great! So we went......
Thursdays feature dinner drink specials and 50% off selected food items. Appetizers and beer were half off. Good start..... We decided to try poke (pronounced POE-kay) and chose the avocado and tofu poke. It came in a little wooden dish shaped like a fish. The tofu was breaded and deep-fried - very tasty. All was mixed with green onions, soy sauce, sesame oil, bits of seaweed and a special Aloha sauce. It was very yummy. We also decided to try musubi..... Now, I have to explain a bit about this one. According to Mark's research, first you soak cooked rice in pineapple juice. Then you layer it on top of the seaweed that they use for sushi. You then fry a slice of SPAM - yes, you read it, S-P-A-M, and place that on the rice. Roll it all up to look like sushi and VOILA! Spam musubi. We noticed MANY happy young adults drinking tropical beverages in martini glasses and gobbling up VAST quantities of spam. Maybe the martini glass contents helped. The last time I ate spam, I was sitting around a campfire unwashed, smokey, tired and starving. Mark joined in with the rest of the happy munchers and gobbled his down smiling the whole time. I nibbled a corner..... hmmmm... I didn't realize that Spam could taste fishy..... oh, that's the seaweed. Remove the seaweed..... another nibble.... better - but still fried Spam. Good thing it was half price and only $1. So now on to the entrees..... I decided to try the Kalua Cabbage - kalua-style BBQ pork stir-fried with cabbage. And the sides that come with EVERY meal - TWO scoops of white rice AND mac salad..... That's right. A traditional home-style meal in a small town in Hawaii includes Spam and macaroni salad. Hmmmm....... The kalua-style BBQ was a North Carolina style - vinegar based and not tomato/catsup. It was very tasty - even mixed with lots of cabbage. You can get breakfast any time here too. One of the specials is a loco moco. It is basically a "mountain of rice" (their words) with a meat on top (burgers, sausage....), two fried eggs on top of that and THEN cover it all with gravy.... Hmmmm...... Now, in all fairness, they did have fish entrees and salads and other things that I would have thought were typical cuisine. But I certainly learned something new about food in the islands!
To read more, visit Hukilau's website - click here

Some Assembly Required

Natalie is coming to stay this summer! She will be in the dressing room. In preparation for her arrival, Mark and I have been planning ways to move our necessities into our room and to find a better place for Natalie to sleep - other than the fold-out couch for several months. And where do you go to find solutions to  these kind of problems? IKEA of course! So, we found a loft bed that would fit over the couch and allow Natalie a place to sleep AND a place to sit or dump stuff AND still have a postage-stamp-sized piece of floor to throw clothes on. In NoCal, we have at least 2 Ikeas in the area. The closer one - in Palo Alto - did not have the bed we wanted in stock. So I drove 1 hour up to Oakland to get the bed. AND I fit it in my Honda Accord! It came in 3 boxes and stated that some assembly was required...... Well, Mark is an engineer. So NO PROBLEM! Mark opened the boxes and laid everything out.....

He found the directions and began to study them..... Hmm......
Seventeen steps..... not too bad........ no words..... just pictures...

And does this picture mean it has 27 steps?
Or 27 parts?

It was a bit confusing........
As you can see from the directions, Ikea KNEW that it would be confusing and that Mark would NEED my help. I even brought the pencil (behind my ear of course!). There were caps for the top and bottom of each support..... caps that, in the picture looked slightly different. And in reality were slightly different..... but did NOT look like either cap in the pictures. We put the wrong set on the wrong end. Oh dear. And, yes.... it DID make a difference when you got to step 12. And notice who got to carry the hammer..... it was for beating the bed when it didn't exactly go together as shown in the pictures.  And so it began......

I smiled and held things and made sure the pencil stayed in place. Mark sweated and grunted and squeezed in behind the couch and banged and grunted some more..... And then I did the last step and the trickiest - putting the sticky-backed sandpaper-type anti-skid strips on the ladder rungs EXACTLY straight and in the center. And the bed was up! Notice the new quilt and pillow sham that fit perfectly on the bed... and the STRAIGHT anti-skid strips..... and all the space on the couch.

You don't see Mark collapsed in the living room drinking a big

glass of water and taking a well earned rest. We needed a few things from Target so I ran over. And GUESS WHAT? Patio stuff was on sale! Now I must explain..... In NoCal, space is a premium. So driveways are not for cars but for children's play space and garages are for storage or play space. And decks are outdoor living rooms for almost 3 seasons. Our deck - which is very large and very empty - faces west and gets LOTS of sun in the afternoon. The two bedrooms (on that side) also get lots of sun and get hot - especially Natalie's room-to-be. With her new bed just under the ceiling, I was concerned that she would cook in the night in a hot bedroom. And Mark has been hinting about eating breakfast and dinner on the deck. So, when I saw gazebos on sale...... I just HAD to get one. AND the one large box fit in my Honda! So, after getting a nice Target employee to help me load it, I brought it home. And on the side of the box, it stated....... some assembly required. But we were on a roll here. And Mark was watered and rested. So we jumped in to Project #2......
First, remove all pieces from the box and look for directions.....

What few directions Mark can find are written by a non English speaker - something like "attach piece A to piece B with screw 1a. Be careful not to spread frame to wide." Hmmmm......... And shown in the directions under "Tools Needed" is a picture of a step ladder. We don't HAVE a step ladder - just a step STOOL. So we start putting up the sides figuring we will find SOMETHING to use when we get to that step - which is #3 out of 3. Mark grabs a B and attaches the end of an A. I get another B and hold it in place at the other end of A. Mark asks if it matters which way it is attached.... I look and it seems to be OK. So he bolts away.  We get all the A's and B's up.....(note use of step stool in picture)

And now for the final step.... #3 where we need the step ladder. That is because we have to put the canvas on the top. And not just ONE piece of canvas. There is a small mini roof-type piece that goes in the center allowing hot air to escape from the top. Mark begins looking in the garage for a step ladder. Our landlord MUST have one in there somewhere..... no..... OK, then how about a saw horse? Meanwhile, I go in the house and bring out one of the tall chairs we use at the eat-in counter in the kitchen. Both are taller than the step stool. But far from a step ladder. And I am not very steady, remember? So we open up the canvas and start to fling it over the roof supports and leap and hop around getting it higher up toward the center. And finally I have to climb onto the chair to ease it over the peak. But I'm not quite tall enough to get the mini canvas over the extra peak. So Mark climbs up onto the chair and works it over. Phew! We feel like we have REALLY accomplished something. And we are almost through. We just have to slip the ends of the canvas onto the ends of the roof poles.... JUST. So we start tugging and grunting and sweating and swearing..... and two out of EIGHT are done. Mark is on the chair and asks me to get on the saw horse and push up on the pole so he can slip the canvas over the edge using a SPOON as a tool. I try to hop onto the saw horse and proceed to skin my shin which starts bleeding..... And then I'm up and pushing and Mark is spooning and grunting.... and then the spoon slips and his thumb is bleeding..... and then all the corners are in and we are sweating and bleeding and very proud of ourselves. And I tie on the privacy screen (on the side toward our neighbors 19.8 feet away) so that we can have breakfast out under our new gazebo and I won't have to be completely dressed and quaffed.

And as I gaze at a happy and tired Mark sitting under his gazebo, I can't help but remember the darling table and chairs on sale at Target...... Honey, want to run over to Target? And, you guessed it, we get 4 fake wicker chairs  2 cushions/chair AND a fake wicker table with tempered glass top. And they almost fit in the Honda. We have to take them out of their boxes and Mark has to run BACK into Target to buy a bungee cord to hold the trunk closed. But we get them home.... and put them on the deck under the gazebo..... and, there is some assembly required.

Mark gets some tools and doesn't even bother to look for directions. He is a pro by now. I unpack cushions and tastefully arrange them on the chairs while he screws and grunts and sweats again. And then the table top is carefully placed on and the chairs are artistically arranged and the other patio furniture is placed to complement the gazebo and it looks great.

And I get out some wine - Californian, of course - and sit down for a well deserved rest. Honey, should we run over to Home Depot to get that composter we saw last week? I'm sure the box will fit in the Honda......