chop A Culinary Playground

Shoyu Chicken

 
Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution has opened many people's eyes to the horrendous problems that we have in the school lunch programs in America.  It made me think back to the school lunches of my youth. No, they were not perfect (ugh tuna casserole) but, they were scratch made.  Hopefully we will go back to the days when school cafeterias made their own food instead of opening boxes and reheating.  Shoyu chicken was a favorite at my school (as I recall the cafeteria cook even bottled the recipe). I went to the same school as President Obama, Punahou, I wonder if he like shoyu chicken?  Shoyu is the Japanese word for soy sauce.

Serves 6 - 8

5 Pounds chicken thighs

1 Quart water

1  Quart premium soy sauce

1 6 inch piece ginger, peeled and sliced

1 Cup green onion, sliced

Optional:

1/2  Onion sliced

Place all ingredients in sauce pan.  Bring to a simmer, cook for one hour.  Top with green onion. Serve with rice.

Eat Local Challenge days 6 and no 7

Yes I failed at my eat local challenge and did not make it to day seven.

Day six was a pretty good day which was topped by a dinner of Sautéed Mahi Mahi with Hamakua Mushrooms and Thai Fried Rice (rice was a cheat)

On day seven I had a super busy day that did not allow me the time to go to the farmers market, thus I had no local items to eat.

Was this project a failure, no.  I realized for the most part I do eat local as much as possible which helps out economy and is better for the environment,.  If in a disaster and we could not get any get any food shipped in, I could survive.  The hardest part of this is that it was a restrictive diet only allowing certain foods.  I am not good with diets, I love food from all over, I love to experiment with food and this was not possible in eating local.

The feed back from my kids was pretty negative, my 9 year old complained all the time.   He is a very picky eater and there was not much that he was willing to eat.  My 17 years old on the other hand is a very adventurous eater and his biggest complaint was nothing tasted like my cooking and it all kind of tasted the same (lack of spices).

A lot of questions also came out of this challenge.  Is it OK to eat local if it is a GMO (lots of our produce is GMO)? Organic verse non organic?  Do we have enough resources to sustain our islands?  Lots of questions with many varying answers.  Next I would like to work and arrange a panel discussion on this.  Another project?

Eat Local Week

Tomorrow I join 200 others from Kanu Hawaii  to eat locally as much as I can for one week.  This is quite a challenge for many reasons.

1.  I live on an island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

2.  I will need to feed my household of seven who all have various food challenges

3.  It may break the bank.

My isolation of living on an island is actually one of the reasons that I am doing this.  I have thought about what we would do if for some reason we could not get  our shipments of food to the island, how would we survive? This test may show if it is feasible.

Yes, I have seven people living in my house and some will have some difficulties with the challenge. First of all I have three boys that eat constantly  My youngest, Jake (2) loves his little snacks (Cheerios). What will I replace them with?  My middle son, Gabe(8) is my finicky eater no fish, the only vegetable that he will eat are carrots.  Will he shrivel away  from not eating? Zayn (17), will eat anything but he also will be going to movies with friends (popcorn) and basically as a typical teen does not want his mom telling him what to do. I also have my father living with us and  he has a chronic condition which is affecting his appetite, so I am going to allow him the food that is easy for him to eat such as ice cream and yogurt.  As for my mother, husband and I we are fine with this and will eat anything.

It will be interesting to see how much this is going to cost.  I will be doing shopping at many places to get the best price.  Eating locally can be more expensive and I will be able at the end of the week to see how much more it is.

Tomorrow I start the day at the Farmers Market near Diamond Head and I guess I will take this week meal by meal. I am allowing us a few luxury items, flour (I will make bread and pasta), olive oil (I can not live with out it), and spices.  I will be blogging to chronicle this week.

Please leave a comment if you have any tips or thoughts.

White House Luau

President Obama hosted a luau at the White House on Thursday.  Take a look at typical Hawaiian fare.

Share Your Table

Interesting Article

Slash Food