Food Omnipresent

Katherine here. Food on my mind this time.

I'm trying to shed some pounds and get in shape for an upcoming hiking adventure in the Tetons. I'm always trying to shed some pounds and get in shape for something. That's my life. It involves going to the gym and lifting weights and running and stuff like that. It involves thinking about food and eating better stuff. Mostly it involves discipline and that comes and goes with me.

This morning there was a perfect storm of sorts and the omnipresence of food in my life stopped even me. After lifting for about an hour and then walking the track with J. for two miles, I actually read one of the omnipresent bulletin boards at the Y. The header for this one: Weight Loss.

The juxtaposition of suggestions four and five began this morning's food storm. Suggestion four: Avoid thinking about food. Suggestion five: Begin to think about food in new ways.

I like to follow rules and suggestions unless I feel like breaking them.

I wanted to follow the weight loss suggestions so I showered and dressed in the midst of a conundrum as I tried to avoid thinking about food while trying to think about food in a new way (the bulletin board gave no suggestions about what new ways we should think about food, but I decided I'd try to focus on more fruits and vegetables since that's my usual approach to thinking about food in a new way).

Part of my struggle was complicated because of my workout surroundings. Plastered all over the weight room are posters of the new government replacement for the food pyramid. I'm going to miss the food pyramid. We've been together for years. It never helped me convince my mom that sugar is NOT a required food group, but I always liked the pyramid's symmetry.

The new Plate icon that replaces the pyramid is clear, I suppose, but the fork confuses me. If we're supposed to cut back, why add an eating utensil? This, added to the 30 minute conversation about the number of Weight Watcher points you can eat in pretzels and pizza dough without toppings that J. and I walked in front of on the the Y track, made it a workout where food thoughts were hard to escape.

I get home. There's a massive story about a new food study on the front of The Denver Post. It's long term, from Harvard, and basically says potatoes suck no matter how you fix them, but the most harm comes from eating French fries. Yogurt is awesome. Go figure.

I turn on Wimbledon and settle in to knit a bit and watch tennis between rows. They actually discuss Dojovik's gluten-free diet. They do this for quite a while. I tried hard to think about knitting and tennis and not about food while realizing that gluten-free diets have replaced lactose-intolerant diets in the media conversation. I probably should mention that Jenny Craig and Weight Watcher ads along with numbers of food product ads have buzzed by with a few exceptions. There was the welcome relief of a tasteful pitch for Wimbledon products (the towel looks lovely)and a low-budget local ad for Pyro City in Wyoming where fireworks are available for sheer pennies.

The phone rings and happily it is Franny with happy news. While she and her husband are in California later this summer, they get to eat at Chez Pannisse, meet Alice Waters herself, and tour her garden. Heavy, heavy envy. I tell her I am avoiding thinking about food to keep from begging to go along which would involve a new mortgage at this point in our yearly travels.

On the other hand, she asks for help with a Meadowood reservation. I think The Restaurant at Meadowood may be the best restaurant in the world and I've been to The French Laundry. Anyway, Franny wanted to know if we knew anyb0dy who could help get a reservation at the time she wanted. We know the restaurant manager from our visits, but it's not like we're best friends or anything. I suggested she mention her boss and that might get her more traction than the Starkey name. We'll see. Franny is good at getting what she wants.

So, that's my perfect food storm. I don't know what to do about suggestion number four. Avoid thinking about food. It's impossible. Besides, I have lunch with Alice and dinner to plan.

Ono Means Delicious

The Wake Up Cafe sits on the Kuhio Highway just a few blocks before the access to Hanalei Bay. This is Puff the Magic Dragon country and this cafe provides a kind of intro to the place. Quickly delivered and well prepared eggs, so-so hashbrowns, the omnipresent Portuguese sausage, and crazy good cinnamon rolls are all readily available for cash paying customers. Franny and I had to walk over to the strip mall across the street to find an ATM. The walls are covered with yellowing pictures of surf and surfers, some of whom, judging by the autographs, must be famous. The Wake Up is clearly a young locals hangout. (Come to think of it, I'm not sure Kauai has any old locals except for a few guys with long gray beards, sandals and awesome tans who look a little like Howard Sprague in the Andy Griffith episode where he goes off to live on an island.) The servers are dressed in surf bum grunge and are clearly filling time until the next big wave. I think it is what a breakfast joint in a place like Kauai ought to be like.

Actually, the best breakfasts during our stay were the ones cooked up by Franny and Ken and served in their condo. There is a garden on the grounds of Hanalei Bay Resort that, as legend has it, was started by some enterprising employees and guests. Guests are evidently free to wander the rows of vegetables and glean what they like. This was a situation custom made for Ken, for whom foraging is a favorite pastime. If he wasn't in the condo, or on the beach, he most likely was scoring sprigs of fresh basil and strange varieties of peppers for next morning's scrambled eggs, or looking for wild boars. Of course, there is fresh fruit everywhere you turn on this island so we had freshly cut pineapple and mango at every breakfast as a prelude to that day's version of eggs and Portuguese sausage. Those breakfasts and the bloody marys that accompanied them were some of my favorite moments.

Across the street and about a half block further on is the Bar Acuda, a too clever name but a terrific tapas restaurant. Judging by the crowds trying to secure a table, it has been almost as "discovered" as the Dolphin situated a few blocks the other side of the Wake Up.

We liked the Bar Acuda so much we ate there twice. This is a very user friendly place where it is easy to order from a medium sized list of small plates whenever the feeling hits. This worked better on Thursday when we had a long and leisurely dinner. We didn't get seated until 9:15 on Saturday and we were rather brusquely informed that the kitchen stopped taking orders at 9:30. The food was every bit as good as Thursday night, but I was made to feel like I was keeping the wait staff up past their bedtimes.

One (of many) memorable tapas was a salad of island sourced honeycomb along with wafer thin slices of local fennel and apple barely dressed with a pricey olive oil and champagne vinegar. We drove all the way to the other side of the island one day in a kind of pilgrimmage to a locally sourced grocery store owned by the Bar Acuda people so we could get the ingredients for the salad. They had everything but the fennel and our homemade results were pretty close.

The Dolphin down the street is always packed and rightly so. The one night we were able to squeeze in (I'm still not sure how Ken managed to park the rental in that tiny space, or why someone didn't tow it away.)I had fish and chips made from Ono and it was indeed delicious. Kathie also had the fish and chips as she was being wonderfully brave and open minded about eating fish, not something she has ever been fond of. Ken and Franny had grilled fish specials. I had two complaints. I felt almost as rushed as that second night at Bar Acuda and the grill taste was so heavy on the fish that it was hard to tell one type from another. We had lunch there our last day and everything was slower and more comforable.

We had one wonderful day where we simply drove around to Po'ipu on the south side of the island and stopped at local food venues for snacks along the way. The Fish Hut in a strip mall (a surprisingly large number of strip malls) in Kapa'a was a winner. The grilled Ono (the stuff is too good not to order every time)plate with cole slaw was terrific.

Further up the Kuhio highway, which by this time has morphed into the Kaumuali'i highway, was a one time sugar plantation now turned into an upscale shopping experience and rum distillery. We had a sort of unplanned rum tasting and ended up drinking Mai Tais the rest of the trip. Well some of us did.

We had a great lunch at the market mentioned above, bought some locally sourced beef and fish, did a little shopping, and headed back to Princeville.

We made one last stop at Scotty's Beachside BBQ for sliders and, you guessed it, Mai Tais, making it back to the resort in time for Franny and Ken to prepare a great dinner to cap the day.

There are other places I have to mention. At the top of the list is the Kilauea Fish Market. It sits behind yet another strip mall on the road to the Kilauea Lighthouse and it might have the best food on the island. Just go up to the counter and order whatever is on special (the fish tacos ((Ono of course)) are to die for). Then go hang out at an empty picnic table and wait for someone to yell your name. We ate here twice and probably should have tried it more often, like the night we ate at that mexican joint by Foodland.

The food (brunch, lu'au, tasting menu for dinner one night) at the St. Regis was always excellent, creative, and downright beautiful. People (Christian and Bud primarily) have always told me how expensive Hawaii is. The St. Regis lived up to that label. One day Ken ordered some drinks from their pool bar and the bill came in just under $45. C'mon man!

But for the most part, I didn't think things in Kauai were exorbitantly priced when compared to the places I hang out in in Denver. For instance, I paid $19 for a bottle of Gruet champagne. That same bottle would have cost a little over $16 in Denver. One of our memorable meals at Bar Acuda ran about $90 a couple. That's pretty consistent in cost to a similar meal in Denver and probably cheaper than a like dinner in D.C.

I miss the fruit.