hawaii month

chili in every bowl

~ jama ~ 19 Comments

Happy Inauguration Day! So exciting!

I know you’ll be busy watching the inaugural ceremony and parade on TV and all, but NOW HEAR THIS: in order to properly celebrate this momentous occasion, this defining moment, this day when America turns on its axis — there is one thing you absolutely have-tuh do:

EAT CHILI!

That’s right! As I mentioned when I posted his recipe awhile back, chili is Barack’s favorite thing to cook. It makes perfect sense, too — an easy crowd pleaser, infinitely adaptable whether you’re a carnivore or vegetarian. Everyman’s food.

There is one thing, though: Barack’s chili (pictured above with ground beef), is surprisingly bland. No salt or tomato sauce was listed in the recipe ingredients. I know there are as many kinds of chili as there are people, but I did think the omission of salt was strange. Maybe that’s why he’s President and not a professional chef!

Anyway, it doesn’t matter whether you doctor up Barack’s recipe, use your own, open up a can, or grab a bowl of the stuff at your favorite restaurant — just as long as you eat some (over rice). Yes, it’s your civic duty!

And for dessert, indulge in some of this special Ben and Jerry’s ice cream, renamed just for the month of January in honor of Barack Obama. It’s available in scoop shops around the country — "amber waves of buttery ice cream with roasted non-partisan pecans." All proceeds from its sale goes to the Common Cause Education Fund.

          

Just last week, Barack was spotted at Ben’s Chili Bowl in D.C. (see video).

This cool video featuring the Obama song will get you movin’ and shakin’ (thanks, Jules)!

Also, this is a very interesting website covering Barack’s Hawai’i connections — places he lived, schools attended, etc. Thanks to James for the link!

For the official Inauguration Day Schedule, click here.

Change we can believe in:
Yesterday = chicken in every pot
Today =  chili in every bowl.

Hot stuff!

friday feast: it’s the quiet ones you have to watch

~ jama ~ 36 Comments


Watercolor by Frank Ducote.

Still waters run deep.

Consider the small, quiet town of Hanapepe (hah-nah-PEH-peh), on the island of Kaua’i, which is the northernmost and oldest of Hawai’i’s eight main islands. I had never been there, until I read this poem:

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talkin’ bout barack

~ jama ~ 15 Comments


The Obamas visiting the U.S.S. Arizona last year.

So, the past few days I’ve been wondering something.

When orator extraordinaire Barack Obama is in Hawai’i, does he ever speak any Pidgin? I mean, can you imagine him saying something like:

Ho, dis haupia cake broke da mout!
We go holoholo bumbai.
No can.

It’s hard to imagine, but I tend to think he must speak some Pidgin when he’s with old friends. I haven’t lived in Hawai’i for 30+ years, and I never speak Pidgin here in Virginia, yet whenever I’m back home visiting family and friends, I naturally begin to shorten my phrases and assume that unmistakable Pidgin "accent." It’s in my DNA, and I think it’s in Barack’s, too. Len wholly disagrees, citing that Barack is too conscious of his public image to utter so much as a syllable in Pidgin, since the press would pick up on every word he says.

Like Pidgin is bad, or something? Not so.

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coming soon to alphabet soup: james rumford

~ jama ~ 13 Comments



Twelve years ago, I wrote my first ever author fan letter to James Rumford, whose first picture book, The Cloudmakers (Houghton Mifflin, 1996), totally blew me away.

There was just something magical about this story of a Chinese grandfather and grandson, who taught their Arab captors how to make paper (“clouds”). The watercolors were luminous — skyscapes of billowy wonder. Since Jim just happened to live in Hawai’i, I also asked in my letter for some research assistance pertaining to a biography I was working on.

 

He wrote back right away with helpful suggestions that set me on my way. That same year, I went to Hawai’i for a couple of booksignings for my third book, The Woman in the Moon. I’ll never forget the moment a stranger walked into the bookstore, a haole man with a beard and ponytail. Someone other than friends and family had come to see me? Wow, this was big!

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friday feast: a soothing lullaby and a side of chocolate!

~ jama ~ 31 Comments

“In Hawai’i the warm breeze often carries the sound of the ocean waves, the rustling leaves, and the rhythmic chants of the hula. It is not difficult to imagine rocking one’s child, or keiki (keh kee), to sleep to the accompaniment of this gentle cadence.” ~ Foreword, Hula Lullaby, by Erin Eitter Kono.

I first heard about Hula Lullaby when Sam Riddleburger interviewed Erin Eitter Kono for Robert’s Snow: Blogging for a Cure 2007, organized by Jules and Eisha at 7-Imp.

High quality picture books about Hawai’i always get my immediate attention because they are so few and far between. This one just happens to be beautifully produced and culturally authentic, making it even rarer and cause for unabashed adulation.

Hula Lullaby is pitch perfect — from the title page, awash in deep, Prussian blue and graced by red anthuriums, to the Foreword spread, set against the red-orange sky of a Hawaiian sunset, to the simple, soothing, repetitive rhyme of the lullaby itself, as it enfolds the reader in its warm, tropical spell:

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