Food is Love

Gather a bunch of people in Hawaii together and the main hub of activity will center around food. Food is love...love in creating the dishes, love in eating the dishes, love in talking about the dishes and the dishes past, love in cleaning up. It is all about love.

Certain occasions call for certain menus. The deluxe menu will include all the difficult to get yummy dishes. If you were to go to a lu'au, you will see kalua pig that was cooked in an underground imu. On the menu would also be lomi salmon, poi, sweet potatoes, chicken long rice, some poke, haupia and maybe if you're lucky kulolo. A deluxe lu'au much like the kind you might see in real Hawaiian communities like Hana you would see dried 'opae(river shrimp), raw a'ama crab, opihi (limpets), wana (sea urchin), ake (raw liver), pipi kaula (jerk meat), dried opelu (dried fish)and squid lu'au (squid cooked with taro leaves and coconut milk). If you don't have kalua pig, you might have one pound laulaus made with a chunk of beef, a chunk of pork, and a piece of salted butterfish, wrapped with a thick layer of lu'au (taro leaves).

Hawaiian food is labor intensive to cook. You need to gather your seafood, seaweed, produce, and proteins. You need to prep your items. Buying taro leaves or lu'au costs about $7 for two pounds. You need to wash the leaves and remove the veins and tips. To make an imu, you must have firewood, the right kind of rocks for baking, banana leaves and stumps, ti leaves, burlap bags and about 8 hours for cooking.

Most of the Hawaiian food are celebration foods that were for special occasions. Most modern Hawaiians have forgotten the everyday foods like lomi opelu with poi, sweet onions, and some seaweed on the side. The traditional diet was full of seaweed, vegetables, and a small amount of protein, all accompanied by poi.

Food is love. We need to revamp our love affair to promote healthy living and yet, feed our families the love without all of the calories, the sodium, and fat.