After hiking to, and snorkeling at, Champagne Pond, we used more of the huli huli chicken and sweet bread buns to make some sandwiches, which we enjoyed in the outdoor dining room at the house we're staying at.
Today was a turning point of our vacation - the halfway point of this trip, as well as the day we would've left had we stayed the same length as our last trip (10 nights). It feels great to know we've done so much and still have so much time to do more. We're planning a trip back into Hilo tomorrow, a trip all the way around the North side of the island, over to Kona, and back along Saddle Road, and a trip up to the Volcano to hopefully see some flowing lava.
And I'll be snorkeling my brains out, of course. I've seen 3 moray eels so far, along with lots of other cool fish, and can't get enough of it.
When we were at Basically Books talking with Deb last week, I joked that we brought a whole library with us. In addition to books on Buddhism, chicken coops, physics, meat, and economics for our light reading pleasure, we brought numerous guidebooks, a book on Hawaiian reef fish, a book on weaving coconut palm fronds, and a stack of Hawaiian cookbooks. We both read a lot, and I'm cooking most meals, so it only seemed natural that we should bring along a bunch of books, particularly our Hawaiian cookbooks.
Using our Best of the Best from Hawaii
cookbook, I made up a 5 lb kalua pork in the oven for dinner tonight (and several meals later this week, undoubtedly). Normally, kalua pork is made by burying a pig in a hole in the ground lined with heated lava rocks, called an imu. But thankfully, you can sorta recreate the flavor and texture and deliciousness of kalua pork in the oven.
Tonight we had it with some rice, poi, and a little ahi poke I made from leftovers... but we plan to make pizza and nachos and breakfast with it, and generally sneak it into every meal we can until it's gone. 5 lbs is a lot of pig!
Oven Kalua Pig
2 Tbspn Hawaiian salt
1/4 cup shoyu or soy sauce
1 tspn Worcestershire sauce
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1/2 inch of ginger root, crushed
1 Tbspn liquid smoke
1 4-5 lb pork butt
Ti or banana leaves
Mix together the salt, soy sauce, Worcestershire sauce, garlic, ginger and liquid smoke. Place pork on several ti or banana leaves. Rub with seasoning mix and let stand for 1 hour. Fold leaves over to wrap the pork. Wrap the leaf-enclosed pork in foil. Place in a baking pan and bake in a 325 degree F oven for 4-5 hours. Unwrap pork, cool, and shred meat.
To go with my dinner tonight, I drank the water from inside a coconut Dan foraged on one of his runs through the neighborhood. I hacked off the end with a kitchen knife, and poured the juice into a glass, added a little lime (just like the song says to do
), and enjoyed the refreshing, cool drink.
(Dan's writing all about our trip over at our other blog, The Dans In Hawai`i, so I'll just stick to writing what I know: food.)
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