No ordinary chicken

I have written about the chickens of Kauai before. I am past that now. Yes, there are chickens everywhere and there is an explanation for why there are so many wild chickens and why they survive. I have even moved past the old question about chickens crossing the road and my wonder at why so many make it. I have moved on.

Let me begin with the claim that I know things about chickens. I took care of chickens when I was a kid and I have visited the chicken barn at the Minnesota State Fair twice. These Kauai chickens are no ordinary chickens. Ordinary chickens are white. I have yet to see a white chicken here. These are fancy looking birds and they come in a great variety of color patterns (except white). Just look at the extra long tail feathers on this fine specimen. What amazes me is that these chickens look so fancy and they live off the land. You see them in parking lots and often in the road ditches. How is it possible they appear so well coiffed given the circumstances under which they exist. Maybe the appearance of the males is selected for in some Darwinian sort of way. Perhaps the hens dig this look.

Amazon is everywhere

Kauai, HI, is not a large place. You can drive most of the way around the island in a couple of hours. It can feel like you have made the flight to a very remote place.

 

We had lunch today in the village of Hanapepe and the shop where we ate has this contraption for making cold brew coffee. It reminds of the type of thing I put together in a college chemistry course. The sign explains that it is for making cold drip coffee. I fancy myself a coffee experts and I am aware of cold coffee, but I had not seen such a device before.

I decided that I really did not know how to produce cold brew coffee so I should do some online research. I searched for cold brew and saw the picture of this exact device at the top of the page - available from Amazon for $480.  

The people of Hawaii would likely resent any assumptions I might make about their connection to the rest of the country and to Amazon. On a related note, Cindy informed me that a replacement for the Apple remote we forgot for our Apple TV would be arriving later today at the condo from Amazon.

Gone Pie!

The further you get from home the more unusual the food choices become. Minneapolis has pretty much anything you can imagine, but some of the menu items in Hawaii are unique.

We celebrated tonight with a trip to the Hanalei Gourmet. The tab was on me because I happened to look at my Amazon account and some class somewhere must have adopted my textbook. I write a textbook, but most of my sales seem to be to individuals. When you sell more than individual copies at the beginning of a semester, it seems more likely you have a class adaption. Good deal.

I should have taken a picture of my fish sandwich which was marlin, but it is difficult to tell which fish is which from a fillet. Marlin is a very solid meat and the preparation was great. I also appreciated that the french fries came with malt vinegar. I prefer malt vinegar to ketchup possibly because we lived near the Canadian border for so long and the Canadians like their malt vinegar. I am not certain what qualifies as gourmet for other folks, but malt vinegar is close enough for me.

Now, I know that ice cream pie with chocolate is not that unusual, but I am a fan when the portions for the rest of the meal are small.

Coffee ice cream, macadamia nuts (the Hawiaan touch), chocolate sauce and whipped cream. The restaurant probably had a name for the pie. Gone Pie works for me.

I will try to provide some more unique local dishes in the future - shaved ice over ice cream, acai bowls, poki bowls, poi stuff (over meat or in donuts?). 

Mark and the giant avocado

We visit a farmers’ market most days. We typically buy a few things, but mostly just look around. The farmers’ market is not a new thing for us. Our home market in Minneapolis is much larger than what we have on Kuaui. Both locations offer produce I cannot identify and have not eaten. The Minneapolis market has many Hmong and Asian farmers who grow things that are evidently edible, but not things I have knowingly eaten. Hawaii just has fruits and vegetables not native to the midwest.

Sometimes I recognize the product, but the size and taste are different. They evidently cannot grow tomatoes here. What they offer are small. Even I can grow tomatoes. Now avocados are a different matter. Cindy bought one today. It weighed a little over 3 pounds. The one I took a picture of was smaller, but still bigger than a softball.

The guacamole made with these giant avocados is great. Perhaps the ones sent to the Midwest are better for storage and shipping.

Best t-shirt ever

Last year at about this time I found a great shop for t-shirts. The shop focused on dirt shirts (see the explanation from last year), but I found other things I liked.

When I saw the shop while we were passing through a small town, we had to stop again. I looked through the inventory and found the same shirt I purchased last year - the best t-shirt ever. I had to buy a second.

Cindy thought I should not be so boring and select one of the other shirts. Natasha thought it was a Bob Marley shirt (I like that). I thought you can never have too much of a great thing. 

You know you are from Minnesota when ...

You know you are from Minnesota if they announce it is time for hula lessons and not wanting to be humiliated if volunteers are needed you decide to search for the bar. Your wife’s Russian friend Natasha heads for the stage.

Photoshoot

You can see interesting things from a lanai in Hawaii. I have a view of the ocean and a golf course that borders on the ocean. I am certain that the golf course is expensive. It certainly is beautiful.

This morning there was s photoshoot on the golf course. At first, I thought it might be one golfer taking some touristy shots of his partner. Then I noticed the lens on the camera and the guy with the light reflector.

I tend to take photos for this blog that I find amusing. Not every photo falls into this category, but many do. A photo shoot would not normally attract my attention especially if the only camera I have at hand is my phone. However, when a member of the group approached what I decided must be a model and instructed her in how to hold the club, I began to pay attention. He positioned her with the club at the top of the backswing and she must have held the club in this position for five minutes. I decided this would be rather uncomfortable and I decided that this was quite impressive. Maybe models do have skills.

By the time I had retrieved my camera and telephoto, they had moved on to the green. Nothing really unusual there. Pulling the flagstick is pretty self-explanatory if you know what the flagstick is. I think lining up a putt would have been more interesting than addressing the ball to putt, but what do I know.

Tomorrow, Mark photographs groundskeepers trimming the shrubs.

Spam

We have got some sleep, settled in, and made a trip to the grocery for supplies. We are liven' Hawaiin now.

This was supposed to be a joke. A tourist joke. I don't like being considered a tourist. If I stay a couple of weeks or more, I would just like to be considered an older person wandering about.

The Spam thing is interesting and has a history. At lunch yesterday, they brought our bill in an empty Spam can. I asked the waiter about this suggesting that there was nothing on the menu that contained Spam. I admit this was an old guy tourist thing to do, but I wanted to point out that I have been around the block a time or two and have even visited the Spam museum where I asked about Hawaii and Spam. He said the Spam was on the breakfast menu. This kind of eliminated the opportunity for me to tell the story about the Spam museum.

With rain you get rainbows

The plan was to sleep until noon. With the delays because of east coast winter, yesterday was a very long travel day and we arrived at our condo very late. We met a young woman on the plane without a way to get to the friend of a friend's couch she planned to sleep on for a week. She was a retired professional ballet dancer turned world traveling hippie putting a several month trip on a credit card. We dropped her off at a place back on a gravel road at the home of someone she had never met. Much braver than I.

Anyway, I am up before 8 because there was a note on the door when we arrived saying the water would be turned off from 9 until 2 so a pipe in the complex can be fixed.. Thought I better take a shower.

The show from the lanai was great this morning. There is a lot of sun combined with rain here. With rain you get rainbows. Long rain events seem rare. 

This may be the excitement for the day. I am beginning to feel groggy again. 

Another plane trip, another airport delay

I call this an "I am stuck in an airport for 9 hours" and this is all I can think of to do. We are on our way to Hawaii so more interesting photos should follow. However, we are stranded in Los Angeles because of a snowstorm in Atlanta and we will not reach Lihue until the wee hours of the morning. Even worse, I did not get my afternoon nap.

There are plenty of people in the same boat (or airport) and cell phone batteries are running low. I have exhausted my capacity to read the same book on the same day so I have resorted to blogging.

There will be more interesting photos in the days to come. I am uncertain about tomorrow. I will be up for more than 24 hours by the time I get to the condo so tomorrow may be a sleep in day.

Aloha!