My house is almost all put together. It only took me forever. A month and a half.

Good thing, too, because I'm having the Coast Guard Wife Mafia over for tea sandwiches on Thursday. I'll put the place together, but only if 17 kids will come and pull everything apart.

I'm happy to have friends. They make cleaning the house worthwhile.

Jarvis who?

Here's the Jarvis that Nathan gets to travel around with.




But you know he'd really rather travel with this one...

Malasadas

That's a malasada. Like a a beignet, but Portuguese/Hawaiian instead of French/Canadian/Creole. Yum.



Poppy can say 2 big words. The first is "dinosaur", the second is "malasada." She likes the chocolate ones.

You know you want to make some at home. Because you can only get them in Hawaii.

Malasadas
Recipe courtesy Chef Leonard Rego, Leonard's Bakery - Hawaii



2 teaspoon dry active yeast
1/4 cup warm water
1 tablespoon sugar plus 1/3 cup sugar
2/3 cup milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
4 eggs, well beaten
1/2 cup unsalted butter, melted
4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons freshly grated nutmeg
Vegetable oil, for frying
Cinnamon-sugar for coating (about 1/4 cup sugar mixed with cinnamon to taste)
In a medium bowl, combine the yeast with 1/4 cup lukewarm water and 1 tablespoon of sugar. Mix until the yeast dissolves then set aside for 5 minutes. Stir in the milk, vanilla, eggs, and butter and reserve.
In a large bowl, mix the flour with 11/3 cup sugar, salt, and nutmeg. Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients. Pour the yeast and milk mixture into the well. Mix the wet ingredients into the dry, forming a soft, smooth dough. Cover the dough with a clean towel and set aside to rise in a warm place until dough doubles in size, about 1 hour.

Punch the dough down, then with oiled fingers, pinch off pieces about the size golf balls. Place the dough balls on greased baking sheets. Cover the malasadas with a clean towel and set aside to rise in a warm place for about 15 minutes.

In a heavy, high-sided pot, heat a bout 2 inches of oil over medium-high until the oil reaches 325 degrees F. Working in small batches, fry the malasadas until they are uniformly golden brown, 7 to 10 minutes per batch. Drain the malasadas on a plate lined with paper towels just until they are cool enough to handle then roll them in cinnamon sugar and serve.




Recipe Summary
Difficulty: Expert
Prep Time: 25 minutes
Inactive Prep Time: 1 hour 15 minutes
Cook Time: 25 minutes
Yield: 24 servings

I didn't even have to use my AK

We're so domestic.

I made real dinner tonight, albeit a vegan one. What's more, we (the family) went to the garden store and bought all manner of herbs and vegetables for our kitchen garden. It's odd that you can't really get a wide variety of fresh herbs in hawaii. We've taken it upon ourselves to grow our own.

In contrast to all that domesticity and earth-loving normalcy, sometimes I have shocking reminders that I live on an Army base. Like the flag-draped coffin I saw hanging out of the back of a pickup truck yesterday. A pickup truck in the middle of a lawn, while people in desert camo walked around casually with guns. Pepsis. Bags of Funyuns. Like there wasn't a dead body right in front of them. If I had my camera on me, I would have taken a picture, because it was surreal. I almost went back to the house to get it, but I'm no photojournalist. If the US government won't let photos of coffins be published, what would happen if I published something so private?

Somebody would probably call the spy hotline on me.

Sometimes you don't need to make a statement. Sometimes the issue speaks for itself, and everyone can see.

And sometimes being different feels safe. A vegetarian coastie family has better odds of survival. Although, I suppose we could be hit by lightning or something.

Hukilau Beach

We went to a Mormon beach today. Thankfully it was deserted, but still, a MORMON beach? Guess what. It's closed on Sundays. But it's got an interesting history. It's where the Hukilaus used to take place (before the government started taxing them and they stopped.) A hukilau is a big, communal fish-haul. Everybody hangs out and catches fish on the shore with nets.

Across from the beach is Goat Island. It's a short wade, but I wasn't about to attempt it alone but for my toddler during winter (which is rough sea season). Maybe in the summer when I've got company.

I kept looking out at the beach thinking "ooh, Lost is on tonight."

Click on the little picture of Poppy. It's a video.

photobooth

Why, new macbook? Why did you come with photobooth? What a time waster.