"best of hawaii" 2009: our favorite hawaii snacks (link)
09.30.09 - hawaii magazine - by derek paiva

one of these days, i'm going to actually leave the continental united states. mark my words. until then, i'm going to continue to build my fantasy about what hawaii's actually like. here's what i've put together: aloha means both "Hello" & "goodbye." they have seventy words for snow. the waters are blue & the greens are green. there are coconut & macadamia trees everywhere. because of some sort of island sorcery, they can see into the future & had the foresight to print a birth announcement for president obama in the newspaper even though we all know that he's secretly a muslim who was actually born somewhere in deep africa. sorcery conspiracy! also, when you first arrive & get off the plane/boat, there are hot hawaiian chicks waiting on the runway to lei you. that's pretty much what the islands are all about. well, that & they like rainbows.

hawaii magazine recently came out with their "best of hawaii" issue (on newstands now!), so they've been putting sections of it up on their website. yesterday, they shared four of their "favorite hawaii snacks and our favorite places to get 'em." their first snack is poke, which was "traditionally bite-size raw fish...mixed with salt, seaweed and kukui nuts, but these days there’s no end to the delicious variations." in hawaii, you're not allowed to have a party or even a beer without poke. that's island law for ya! next up is "hawaii chips," which are "crisp, kettle-cooked slices of kalo (taro), ulu (breadfruit) and yellow and purple sweet potato." they're basically a better version of terra chips.

their third snack is musubi, which looks friggin crazy. it's often made with spam, a block of rice & some nori, but the one they mention--mana bu--makes thirty different kinds of the stuff. their last snack choice is shave ice, which is exactly what it sounds like. some ice, some flavor. some refreshment. hmm. they didn't even include crack seed in the list. must be because of the crack seed epidemic. anyway, there's a pic that accompanies the article of obama & the first daughters eating shaved ice. it's good to see that he's visiting there every once in a while to make the whole birth story look good. maybe if he goes there enough times, people will start believing that he actually was born there. i mean, i won't, but people believe some crazy things these days.