apple pie

apples were on sale this week at foodland. so i got in tuned with my domestic side (which doesn't see the light of day all that frequently) and made some pies. then i cleaned my bathroom and made my bed and put domestic back in the closet and settled down to eat pie and read a book :).

pearl harbor

(sorry the order is weird)

hawaiian rainbow

the first time i ever heard of hawaii was second grade music class with mrs. zimmerman. i remember flipping through my music book (to be left in the music room. not to be taken from the music classroom. ever. under any condition.) every week, looking at the pictures. the hawaiian rainbows song was towards the middle-end of the book. i was thrilled the day we finally got to sing:

hawaiian rainbows

great clouds roll by

they fall from heaven

down through the sky.

i see a hawaiian rainbow at least once a week- sometimes twice or three times. and every single time, this song comes to mind.

fire!

here is a clip of the best-ever-so-far scene from the office: check it out! i have watched this scene three times and laughed out loud every time. it's classic.

happy valentine's day!

i’ve never been a big fan of valentine’s day.

i don’t remember celebrating it before i entered kindergarten. so that first valentine’s day party was very exciting. i carefully prepared my valentines, and arrived to find a variety of sugary treats eagerly awaiting my arrival.

i don’t remember much about the party, but i do know that valentines were exchanged, and the consumption of unhealthy quantities of sugar occurred. i may even remember one of my parents cautioning me about the downfall of ingesting too much sweetness in one sitting once the remnants of my cardboard and construction paper mail box and i arrived home.

my mom got a degree in health and nutrition in college. as the first child, my sugary choices were limited. the only cookies i knew were oatmeal raisin and the russian tea-cakes my dad made once a year. (by the time number six came along, many of these healthy eating principals had gone out the window, except we all harbored an open disdain for store bought baked goods because the home made variety were so much better.) so needless to say, the aura of all the store-bought goodness was crippling. i didn’t have the willpower to muster up a “no” in the face of a new, different heart shaped confection.

my next memory is of the blue carpet in our ranch-style home. my bedroom was about ten 6-year old steps from the bathroom. that was approximately seven steps too many. before i knew it, the contents of my valentine’s day binge were all over the carpet.

needless to say, any valentine’s days that followed were eyed with suspicion. every school year after that, i would dutifully hand out my valentines and nibble on a brownie, but i would never party with the abandon that i’d had fateful first valentine’s day.

so what did i do today? made a half batch of oatmeal raisin cookies. they were quite tasty, still warm out of the oven.

composed in china (june, 2008)

smoke falls to the ground
life ignites, burns, smothers
falls to the ground
vanishes
once and for all
because one chance is all you get.

(and this came together because i watched the smoke from a cigarette literally fall through the fog to the sidewalk. as much as i detest smoking, it was beautiful.)

apple cinnamon

do any of you remember dannon apple cinnamon yogurt? it was available for purchase at your local martin's supermarket in the mid-1990's. it was my favorite. the only flavor worth buying in my humble opinion. but then some high-powered, over-paid, under-educated, unknowledgeable dannon executive decided to cut the production of the flavor. i was crushed. i had to make do with mediocre peach and blueberry and raspberry flavors. 

until today.

i visited our local foodland grocery store with a coupon for yoplait yogurt in hand the other day. i parked myself and my shopping basket in front of the display and read through the flavors: which fortunate canisters of yogurt would be coming home with me?

then i saw it.

apple turnover.

hmmm... turnovers are apple-y and cinnoman-y, are they not? i thought to myself.

i was not disappointed. it's just as good as i remember the dannon yogurt being. i am pleased beyond all reason.

this morning, i read through the foodland ad for this week. yoplait's on sale this week: 10/$6 and i have another coupon besides that. i am thinking of abandoning all second-rate flavors in persuit of the only one worth my consumption: apple turnover.

chun wah kam noodle factory

i think it's pretty safe to assume that the majority of my readers have never visited kapolei, hawaii. infact, up till a few weeks ago, i hadn't been there myself.

the town kapolei is brand new. so new, that the two-lane roads that for so long worked just fine in connecting kapolei with the rest of oahu are congested like you wouldn't believe. most of kapolei is (a) newly built or (b) being built. 

so on tuesday evening rosa announced that we were going to eat dinner in kapolei at this new chinese place. ok whatever, as long as they have white rice and chicken something, i will be a happy camper.

then we pulled into this place: the chun wah kam noodle factory. we walked in and my jaw promptly hit the floor. the place is fabulously decorated: minimalist and modern, asian, red and white. cement and stainless steel and glass. the bathroom was even fabulous.

so what you do is go up to this counter and stare at all the food options. at some point, an attentive employee will ask "may i help you" and you will nod (because by this point you are speechless) and they will ask if you want a "small or big box". a small box is $6.75. you can have either one starch (noodle or rice- and not just regular, plain, white rice- we're talking 8 different kinds of fried rices and 8 more kinds of noodles to choose from) or you can split that one starch into two smaller servings of different starches. by the time the guy on the other side of the counter had scooped in my rice and noodle choices, i thought he was going to have to get a second box for my two choices of entrees. 

but he had been well trained. he knew to keep shoveling it in. when i left, i had dinner for that night, and lunch for the next day. all in one small foam container.

now that we know what we're doing, we've decided that next time we (rosa and i) are going to get the big box (AKA 2 meals for 2 people), for $10, and then we'll have 4 choices for starches and 4 choices for entrees. we can share these, getting to enjoy more different dishes and save money at the same time. 

so next time you are wandering, starved, through kapolei stop in and check it out :). 

trabajo

today was my first day of trabajo (that's spanish for "work". the girl who sat next to me on the bus today was doing her spanish homework... brought back fond memories). 

it went really well. 

i did all our family's laundry for 4 years. i usually had 2-3 loads a day except that i took a rest on sunday, so on monday i had double. the most we did in one day was 17 loads if i remember correctly. 

since i've been here in hawaii (and washing only my own clothes and towels) i've done maybe 5 loads. i think i'm going through folding withdrawal. so today they had me folding/organizing a giant wall-o-denim. and i loved it :). i actually can't wait to go back on wednesday!

and by the way, old navy's spring stuff is out and it is fabulous! it's going to be hard not to go wild and buy basically every item in the girls section for jade...

neighbors

there are many things i am finding fascinating about living here. some of these things are new to me not necessarily because of the state i have chosen in which to live, but because they are completely new life experiences for me.

such as the existence of neighbors.

it’s not like i’ve never had them. from birth until the age of 8, we had neighbors. granted, we couldn’t see in each others windows, but our lawns touched, so you could see when the neighbor had mowed their grass and we had not. but i don’t remember feeling especially physically close to them, probably because our lots were several acres each.

when i was 8 years old, we moved to the farm. there were neighbors within walking distance, but we couldn’t see them when the corn (found on three sides of our lot and across the road) got too tall or the rain/snow came down to hard and too fast. we were free to scream, run around naked, start fires and be basically uncivilized: no one would really ever know, it wouldn’t wake anyone up from their afternoon nap. it really was a fabulous arrangement.

and so i move to a townhouse. we only share one of our walls (i think that means this is a duplex, but i’m not really up on my terminology, except that everything’s called “a unit”). it is very obvious what wall this is: it’s the wall without lots of windows everywhere. (we do not lack natural light in this unit, which i think is amazing. even our backsplash has little holes cut into the wall with frosted glass windows inset.)

and suddenly, i know when my neighbor comes home from work every evening because i can hear his motorcycle- it sounds just like trevor’s- pull in. if kids are out playing in the street i can hear them. currently, i smell someone grilling. i knew the superbowl was on because i could hear cheering coming of one of the houses down the street.

it is the strangest thing, this living with other people near you.

and to think that the majority of the world lives like this (or in even more condensed!). makes me go “huh”.