Food of Hawaii

As if Hawaii wasn't amazing enough, they had to go and have amazing food. And you know we Reid Gerdeses love our food.

Many an incredible meal was had. Here are some of them.

Our first poke (tuna) of the trip. It was good, but we had a lot better later.

Beautiful rainbow seafood salad

Hawaii has lots of food trucks, which we love.

This was weird. It was crunchy rice wrapped in thin sliced pork. It was kept cold in a cooler and then microwaved. not very exciting or good, but we were hungry. It was a tide-us-over til we got to a restaurant.

Leonard's Bakery, where we had amazing malasadas.

Malasadas. They were all warm, one had cinnamon, one had sugar, one had a salty sugar, one was filled with chocolate and one was filled with coconut. Oh. My. God.

Fuzzy's pork and cabbage from a shrimp truck

My pineapple lava shrimp. My mouth waters everytime I look at this photo.

More food truck food.

This was one of my favorite meals of the trip. Spicy poke and chicken teryaki.

Dole Whip. A non-dairy pineapple frozen treat.

Fuzzy's fish tacos at Sweet Home Waimanalo.

My BBQ pork. This was another of my favorite meals of the trip. Can anyone guess why?

Lava flow. Pina Colada with strawberry puree. I drank 2 of these in about 10 minutes.

We went to a cook-your-own-steak place. We got the Kona crusted filet. DELISH!

Lucky for me, I had just taken a steakhouse cooking class!

The night we tried to go to the fishmarket that was closed, we ended up going to a ramen place. (Don't tell Fuzzy, but I didn't like it.)

Enjoying some sake.

Pork lau lau and poke from the market near our Kauai hotel. Sadly, I was sick when Fuzzy had this and didn't get to try it. Luckily, by our last day there, I was able to eat again and I got to try the poke and pork with cabbage. Super yums!

OK. So now it is time to talk about something important.

Hawaiian Shave Ice.
It is no secret that I am addicted to SnoBiz. Those of us lucky enough to be raised in Mississippi probably grew up eating it, or at least went there a lot when they were in high school college and beyond. For a while, I knew of every SnoBiz location in the Vicksburg/Clinton/Jackson Metro area. I can eat more SnoBiz than anyone probably should. For years Fuzzy has compared it to a snocone, which was a stalemate argument in our house for years.

Then we go to Hawaii. Where that sort of concoction was born. Where there is a shave ice stand on EVERY CORNER.

I was in Heaven.

The first place we had it in Hawaii was at Matsumoto Shave Ice on the North Shore of Oahu. The condensed milk was flowing. The line was long. The ice was....incredible.

I refer to that shave ice as "The Best Thing I've Ever Eaten Ever." Seriously.
It was literally The Best Thing I've Ever Eaten Ever.
We don't have any photos of it. Only the one of me with the kittens out back. But I see it every day in my dreams...

We had many others after that, and most of them were good. I tried to get some different flavors, but you just can't beat strawberry and vanilla with a ton of sweetened condensed milk. Why mess with perfection?

(Not the best ice, but it is a good photo)

If you look closely at this photo, I am wearing a tanktop from Matsumoto Shave ice at this (non-matsumoto) shave ice place. Yeah. Hardqore.

I mean, come on. The most gorgeous place in the world AND shave ice? I really don't know why we haven't moved there yet.

You can't just get a dinky shave ice machine. You have to go big. Like one of these dudes. Don't think we haven't considered buying one and opening a business. Or buying one for personal home use...

Last Shave Ice of the trip at Ono Ono shave ice.

PERFECTION. (the blue is vanilla)

This photo pretty much sums it all up.