This week I have been OOO and on the beach. Marco and I are in Maui doing a whole lot of nothing and taking a proper vacation. Our days here look like this:
We wake up around 6:30 AM and make a pot of highly caffeinated okay tasting coffee. After we drink a large glass of lemon water, a few too many cups of coffee are consumed and we get the day started promptly. Sometimes we go to the gym and workout, separately but together, and some days we slather our bodies with sunscreen and head straight to the beach. The next 10ish hours are spent swimming in the ocean, snorkeling, jumping off rocks, reading, reapplying sunscreen, and looking for cats/dogs to pet. Occasionally we will run back up to the room and bring fresh fruit down to snack on, Marco will make a cocktail, or we will grab the credit card to get fries from the shopping mall down the pathway.
Just before sunset we swap out our sandy towels for fresh ones and dump our belongings inside for the day. Still dripping wet, we stroll down to Hula Grill for painfully overpriced cocktails. Mai tais, of course, and every now and then we share a lava flow (pina colada with mango puree swirl).
Then, for the best part of the day, we grab our two child-size inflatable circle floaties and we float in the ocean as we watch the sunset. A perfect day if you ask me.
I know everyone says they love the beach but I really love the beach. It’s a gathering place for everyone of all ages, all sizes, and all genders. Everyone is there half naked and having fun.
The beach, especially in Hawaii, is the only place I feel totally comfortable in my teeny tiny bikini. I still wear it everywhere but on the beach, all my insecurities about my not-so-flat stomach and potential cellulite instantly vanish and I am free to frolic with sand all over my ass. It’s also the only place where feeling sticky is acceptable because if you are not sticky that means you didn’t apply sunscreen. A foolish mistake that I will never make again in my life. Crunchy hair, sand in your drink, wet pages of your book, smeary glasses – none of it matters when you are at the beach.
And then there is the ocean. I’m happiest in any body of water but the ocean is hands down my favorite. I love it when the waves are calm and you can float peacefully but it’s more fun when it’s feisty. I have an odd sense of peace when the waves are aggressive and you have no choice but to relax with the current — in and out. Rushing to beat a huge wave before it crashes and you feel it tug at your feet as a reminder that you made it just in time. Mother nature is a beautiful beast.
Down at the end of the beach are some black rocks that everyone jumps off. I have done it year after year but it doesn’t get any less scary when you are up there looking down. The day before my birthday we snorkeled around the rocks which turned into us jumping off the rocks. We weren’t totally sober and every time my hand grabbed the black lava rock I felt like I was climbing up to mars. When I got up to the top and looked down my life flashed in front of me, which happens more and more often the older I get. What if I don’t jump far enough? What if the wind blows me into the rock while I am in the air (lol like I am so small the wind could push me)? What if Marco slips trying to be the adventure dude he is?
I ended up repeating “humans do hard things, humans do scary things” until I eventually realized the faster I jump the faster it will all be over.
Boom. It was over, my bikini top flew all the way up to my chin, water up my nose, and I was left feeling beyond accomplished. We ended up jumping three more times that day. It’s never not scary standing up on the edge of a cliff but it’s much more digestible when you haven’t had a lava flow (or two) before.
Unlike our trip to Paris, this trip isn’t centered around eating at restaurants. Maui isn’t necessarily a food town, especially where we are on the west side of the island. We are smack dab in the middle of all the resorts surrounded by astronomically priced and mediocre tasting poke tacos, ahi steaks, and a million variations of surf & turf plates. Next week I’ll cover the places we did enjoy but this week our diet is consisting of 80% mahi-mahi.
On Wednesday Marco got up around 4 AM and went on a fishing trip off the coast of Lanai. He was gone until about 2 PM and he returned with a few pounds of fresh mahi-mahi.
Mahi-mahi is a semi-firm flakey white fish with a mild flavor. It can be used a million different ways but fish this fresh is best prepared simply. We have been searing it in a pan and throwing it on the grill with just salt and pepper. Once cooked our go-to has been rice bowls with whatever veggies we have and a cucumber pineapple quick pickle topping (recipe below).
Another day we turned grilled mahi-mahi into sandwiches. Layered on buns were grilled pineapple slices, grilled Maui onions, the mahi-mahi, and cabbage slaw tossed with tartar sauce.
We are going on day six of eating mahi-mahi and we are not tired of it. We actually can’t get enough of it. I told Marco he should go on another fishing trip so we can freeze some and overnight it back home. Boar hunting was also on his list but it doesn’t look like he will be able to this trip.
The Kitchen Club started back up this week and I sent out a recipe for Summer Chili. A transitional recipe that celebrated the best of summer and fall. Check it out, here.
I have made this almost every day and I don’t know what to call it…my thought was to quick pickle cucumbers and onions with pineapple for extra flavor. It has turned into a universal topping for every meal I have cooked this week.
Take a cucumber and dice it into small pieces. Dice some pineapple and sweet onion the same size as the cucumber and add them all to a bowl. Sprinkle with salt and add a generous splash of seasoned rice vinegar. Not too much where it looks soupy, just enough to leave a little layer on the bottom of the bowl. As everything sits, the salt will draw out more moisture.
Toss everything together and leave it in the fridge while you prep the rest of your meal but don’t leave it all day or it can become soft. I like it when the cucumber still has a bite to it. Serve it over rice bowls, on fish tacos, over breakfast fried rice…it is good on literally everything.
Acclaimed Pitmaster Matt Horn to Launch Free Barbecue Classes for Bay Area Kids 👏🏼
“RECIPE?!!!!” A rampant internet comment that just won’t die shows how recipes, and the people who develop them, are undervalued.
I’m Finally Getting Rid of My Instant Pot, and I’m Not the Only One *Do you have one? I never hopped on the Insta pot train.
Remembering Marcella Hazan in Recipes – 4 recipes!
Shoyu Sugar Steak *From Sheldon Simeon’s book, Cook Real Hawaii. We grabbed lunch there yesterday.
Watch these videos of a woman hand pulling cheese to make tenili, a stringy cow’s milk cheese. It’s fascinating!
Best thing I ate this week: Tako (octopus) À l’escargot from Merriman’s.
I bought a 24-pack of these little sunscreen pouches to give to the group of friends that came out to visit us in KC a handful of months ago. Since then I have been waiting for a time when I would need to use one.
They are small enough to put in a purse or wallet, you don’t have to worry about them leaking, and I have them stashed everywhere I could think to put one. Well, when we left for Hawaii I forgot to apply sunscreen and I had a window seat on the plane. This guy was in my wallet and it saved me! There was enough to reapply when we landed too.
They might not be a “clean” mineral-based option but they are perfect as a backup. Plus the nostalgic smell of summer camp sparks instant joy.
Chickens and kittens!!
Chicken Facts: There are chickens everywhere, literally everywhere, in Hawai’i. We were curious why and this is what we learned.
The islands have had chickens since the Polynesians brought red junglefowl with them between the 4th and 7th centuries. Those birds eventually got loose and occupied the jungles.
Fast forward to 1982 and 1992 when hurricanes Iwa and Iniki hit the islands and destroyed domestic chicken coops setting tons of domestic chickens free on the islands. Those birds start living all over the islands with no real predators and reproducing like wildfire.
Our first thought was “great for locals they can just trap and eat these chickens” but apparently, they taste awful. In part because they have cross-bred with the red junglefowl and because they eat anything and everything. Chickens we buy at the grocery store are specific breeds with specific diets to taste like chicken.
So why not just kill them? Red junglefowl are protected on the islands and because they have bred with domestic chickens it makes it hard to tell the difference. Meaning you can’t kill a crossbred chicken.
These chickens cause big problems. They eat and destroy native plants and feed on native insects unbalancing local ecosystems. Don’t feed the chickens while you are here, just snap a few photos of the cute babies.
Talk to you next week for Maui restaurant deets! Xx M
The feral chickens aren’t tasty but their eggs are delicious.