An Effing Foodie

Amanda Hesser Points Accusatory Rolling Pin at Michelle Obama, Needs to Take Big Step Back

A lot has been made of Michelle Obama's organic vegetable garden at the White House.  Big-eyed, righteous foodies are all a-twitter about how the Obamas will usher in a new era of enlightened eating, eager to use the first family as a springboard for fantastic, hazily-formed food ethics.

So when I read Amanda Hesser's Op-Ed this morning in the NYT, passively cajoling our First Lady to get back in the kitchen, I wasn't overly surprised.  But I was most certainly irritated.

I do agree with the Hesser's basic message; people SHOULD be cooking more--particularly parents--to instill healthier eating habits, manners, family values and culture into themselves and their children.  Absolutely!

But, take a BIG step back...did a cooking blogger, a mega-liberal food columnist from the NYT, just tell our First Lady that she should pretend that she cooks, for the good of our children???

FOR PHUCK'S SAKE.

Do people WANT to be lied to?  How in the HELL can a First Lady (and before that, the wife of a prominent politician) be expected to be a domestic goddess? 

On the campaign trail, when Cindy McCain was asked what her favorite recipes were, her asinine interns forged "McCain Family Recipes" right off the Food Network website. Ya know why?  Because beer heiresses don't FN cook. 

Apparently, that's not what liberals OR conservatives want to hear.

I'd much rather hear that Michelle just doesn't have the inclination to cook than be spoon-fed some nonsense about how someone with a 12-hour day MAGICALLY produces a gourmet meal for her two kids and her husband, the President of the United States.

Hesser presents an unrealistic, misguided standard to hold mid-recession American families to.  More than ever, parents are working long hours to put food on the table at all--many of them single parents.  Will you judge them for using packaged greens, and jarred sauces?  Shouldn't you be glad that a meal is being prepared at all, and eaten in concert? 

EF Eats Honolulu, and FINALLY Eats Ono's Hawaiian Food

I tend to get tactical with my meals on my rare trips home.  Don't judge!  There are a finite number of meals that a lady can consume, and they must be devoted to things that I've contemplated selling my soul to get mid-winter in the Empire State.

Witness!  (Simply a numbered list, not ranked by importance, thank you!):

1) Zippy's Mini Chili and Chicken Plate: Check! 

<-- Eaten at Koko Marina, my favorite branch.  Perfectly juicy chicken thigh with a bayside view? YES please!

(Zippy's has a thigh-only policy with their fried chicken.  GENIUS!)

Hana hou!  Anything worth doing is worth doing twice.  This one met its end on a blanket at Kaka'ako Beach Park:

2) Breakfast at Likelike Drive Inn: Check!

Left to right: Portuguese sausage, rice and eggs; rolled guava jelly pancakes.

3) Late night nosh at Liliha Bakery: Check!

 

L to R: Hotcakes; loco moco (that's rice with a hamburger patty, gravy and a fried egg).

4) Okazu (starchy food favored by field workers in the Hawaiian plantation days, nowadays sold in deli-like okazu-yas, evolved to reflect a meld of Chinese, Japanese, Filipino and Portuguese influences) lovingly selected from Fukuya:

 

Clockwise, starting from top left corner: Shiso musubi (rice ball), miso tofu, chow fun, potato hash, sweet potato tempura, nishime.

Check!  Rinse!  Repeat!  This time selected from Nu'uanu Okazuya (a first for me!):

Clockwise, from top left corner: Chow fun, potato hash, furikake musubi, pumpkin stewed with dried shrimp, furikake chicken, wakame roll.

...devoured with BFF Alli and her husband, on our favorite beach:

(Sometimes, life is all gravy.)

5) Shave ice from Waiola: Check.

Melona, lychee and watermelon syrup, with ice cream at the bottom.

6) Absurdly outsized meal at Side Street Inn: Checkity-check-check. 

 

Top: Fried pork chops; Bottom, L to R: Kim chee fried rice, kalbi special (made with ribeye?).

Above: Korean fried chicken; Below: Chinese-style steamed moi special.

Plus/minus a gaggle of lychee martinis. 

Number of people eating: 3.5, if you count welcome relief from a latecomer.

7) Poke, every time the opportunity presented it self: Check!

 

Above: Limu Ahi Poke from Foodland.

Super-Expressive Foods: Manapua Monster, Mango Custard Malasada

Where've I been?

Well...'twas time to go to the Motherland, wherein I was greeted with beautiful weather, great friends, and a bevvy of mui-expressive foods of the pastry-kind.  Chekkit!

BLARGH!  Manapua Monster menacing hapless Half-Moons!

Manapua Monster was the quintessential Hawaiian char siu bao: HUGE, and crammed with BBQ pork of the leaner, shredded variety (think less saucy, more red-pulled-porkish).  He and the Half-Moons (stretchy-glutinous skinned, filled with minced water chestnuts, pork and dried shrimp) play out their ancient battle every day at the Island Manapua Factory.

Yepyup, I like Char Hung Sut better, too--but we were on our way to Manoa Falls, so convenience won out over dimsum particularity.

No visit home is complete without a (few) visit(s) to Leonard's.  Call me old-fashioned (go ahead, it's not something you'll be able to say very often!) but I don't really care for the baroque new malasadas, with the addition of cinnamon sugar, stuffings of various custards, etc.  A fresh, just-fried-HOT Portuguese doughnut tumbled in sugar is an untinkered thing of beauty, and no one does them as well as Leonard's.

That said, lovely BFF Alli has always been one to try new things, so she bravely sampled some of the newer malasadas--one filled with pina colada custard, and another with mango custard.

>MMMfph<  Mango HORK!

"Tastes like sunscreen," sayeth Alli (of the pina colada one).  As for the mango?  "Tastes like...mango sunscreen."

No worries, we had standard malasadas at the ready for her, just in case.