Thank you and Happy Thanksgiving!
October 30th, 2009 by Wanda AdamsFirst, mahalo nui loa and obrigado for the ideas on ant eradication. I LOVE the cinnamon idea. I'm just afraid my littlest and most curious cat will become cinnamon-addicted (he gets his nose into everything)! They're still marching one by one so I'm going to try a number of these ideas and see which works best.
Now I have another question. To my dismay, we are already moving into the holiday season...wasn't it just summer a few weeks ago???? Didn't I just get back from my summer vacation in Venice???? How did it get to almost Thanksgiving???
Anyway, we food editors every year have to come up with story ideas for the season. I've got one that grows out of a chapter on my new book in Island celebrations (to be published sometime in 2010), but I'm wondering, do you have any questions or problems that plague you each holiday season, or any great recipes, or any ideas for a story? I'd love to hear about them. Maybe I can help or we can work on a story together.
Write me. You can email me at wadams@honoluluadvertiser.com or just hit the respond thing on this blog. (Sorry, not a techie so don't know what it's called.)
Much aloha,
Wanda
October 30th, 2009 at 8:27 am
Hi Wanda,
Here's what plagues me every Thanksgiving...pie crust! For the past few years, my mom has spent Thanksgiving in Vegas so her pumpkin pie duties have fallen in my lap. Her pumpkin filling is a breeze to make and she has a great pie crust recipe that is really good except when I make it. First of all, I think I over handle the dough. Secondly, I really don't know how to flute the crust nicely. I think I need one-on-one tutoring from a professional!
November 3rd, 2009 at 12:06 am
Oh, I feel your pain. I can flute...I should do a video to show you, it's not hard at all, involves pushing one way with your thumb while your pushing the other way with the thumb and forefinger of the other hand. But I CANNOT make great piecrust. My girlfriend has a recipe she swears by but it's not as good when I make it as when she does. In England, they call it "Having a heavy hand with pastry." That might make a good story for Thanksgiving; I'll just have to find someone to ask who's really good at pastry. I've actually — and I can't believe I'm telling the whole world this — given up and use frozen or mixes when I make pies because, hey, they can't be worse than mine!
November 4th, 2009 at 2:26 pm
Aloha e Wanda,
Yes, there is truth about being heavy-handed in making pie crust or kneading dough. Have seen it demonstrated several times where equal ingredients were given to two different persons who made the crust in the same amount of time, baked it, and very different results.
Old Hawaiians used to select people to pound poi according to their natural results: Soft poi to be eaten quickly, "lima hehe'e" or poi to be stored for a long trip or period, "lima pa'akiki". I was the former while my brother was the latter. Our finished pa'i'ai was never stored in the same crock or calabash!
November 21st, 2009 at 5:27 am
I just wanted to thank you very much for this illuminating article. I have already bookmarked your site, when I have more free time I am going to have to do some further browsing. Well back to my dreaming of Panama or back to the books - I wonder which one is going to win out.
November 26th, 2009 at 9:07 pm
Wow everyone, it is Thanksgiving Day! I'm enjoying my extra day off, and I am planning to doing something fun that'll probably involve a bike ride and seeing something new in McPherson I haven't seen yet.
You write something new at Thanksgiving?