Tiki Reunion

Tonight my old pal FP and I got together for the first time in a long, long time - along with our husbands. We had them over for some mai tais in our tiki bar (which we don't utilize anywhere near enough).

FP and I go back to middle school, though we didn't hang out much until after high school, when we became conjoined twins. We shared some good times and some rough times, some great fun and some bad decisions, but it all made us closer. Unfortunately, other circumstances intervened and pulled us apart for awhile.

While I was in Hawai'i in June/July, I discovered that FP and her husband JJ have a great blog about travel called Same Same But Different. I spent some time pouring over every entry, catching up on some of what they've been up to, and realizing how much I missed her. I also learned that they love Mexico like we love Hawai'i, and visit probably even more often.

A little cross-blog-commenting and Facebook banter later, and we made plans for tonight.

(BTW - you GOTTA check out her recent 'food special' post about shopping in bodegas in Mexico.)



Gracious guest that she is, FP brought authentico guacamole using a recipe from a friend in Mexico, and whipped up a batch of cereal bars just for the occasion, picking a mix of chocolate and vanilla crisp rice cereal, plus banana flakes, to create amazing coco-banana bars that I've been devouring ever since. She's actually on a quest to find the most delicious marshmallow/cereal combination out there, and has done a fair bit of experimenting. Who knew you could make rice crispy treats with stuff other than rice crispies? If she'll let me, I'll post her experiments so far.



Since our get together was billed as a happy-hour of sorts, and was during the dinner hour, I decided to use up leftover kalua pig, and decidedly not leftover Spam to make some sliders on Hawaiian rolls. I cut the Spam to size and fried it up in some soy sauce and sugar, to get the right salty-sweet coating on it. JJ approved.



I think the excitement of being together again led me to overdo it in the mai tai area, which might explain the lack of photo evidence of either me or FP or most of the food. But Dan mixed great drinks for everyone and I had a great time. You know a get-together is a success when you make plans for the next weekend while saying goodnight.