What is Chinese?

Being Chinese, and being a "foodie", people inevitably ask me, what the "best" Chinese restaurant on island is.   This would seem like a reasonable question, but really it is inherently flawed.   To put it in prespective, could you really go to the mainland and ask them what their favorite American restaurant is?   America is a big country, and American cuisine is extremely diverse.   Is a 50's diner the same thing as a great American steakhouse?    Is Texas barbecue the same thing as a New York deli?   Is a Southern restaurant where everything is fried the same thing as a California one where everything is tofu and sprouts?   No.   And of those pairings, is any of them any more "American" than the other?   Definitely not.   The same can be said of Chinese food.   China is an even bigger place than the U.S., so naturally Chinese cuisine is as diverse as American.    Cantonese food is not the same as Szechuan. 

I, like most overseas Chinese from Cantonese stock.   So naturally I would favor Cantonese food.  But even within one style of food, there are variations.    There is a very heated debate between Texas, Kansas City, Memphis, and North Carolina as to which region has the best barbecue.   None of them are the same, but everyone has their favorite.   The Chinese who left Guangzhou (Canton), over 200 years ago, to come work on Hawaii's sugar cane plantations, brought with them the Cantonese food, language, and culture they remembered from their own particular villages.   After staying here for over 200 years, their culture evolved separately from Chinese in China, or any other part of the world for that matter.  So I can definitively say that the Chinese culture that I am part of, is the Hawaii Chinese culture.

Chinese also immigrated to the mainland U.S..   They moved to California in great waves and helped build the TransContinental Railroad.    They moved to New York and built the largest Chinatown in the nation.  They moved to Australia, and Singapore, and Canada, and many many other places.   Almost all of these people were Cantonese people.  Which is why the Cantonese language is so pervasive outside of China.   Yet most people in China and Taiwan, with the exception of Guangzhou and Hong Kong, speak Mandarin.  So really if you want to speak to any Chinese in China, you need to speak Mandarin.  But if you want to speak to any Chinese from a Chinese community outside of China, you need to speak Cantonese.

It's really funny.  In my Uncle's office, there are 2 girls.  One is from Shanghai, the other is from Hong Kong.   One speaks Mandarin, the other Cantonese, so neither can talk to each other.   The common language between them is English.   But does that make either one of them any less Chinese?   Definitely not.  Even within Cantonese, there are variations.   Whenever I talk to people from Hong Kong, they say that my Cantonese sounds funny.   Like I've got some kind of farmer's accent.   Well, considering that all of the Chinese who moved to Hawaii to work on the sugar plantations were farmers, I guess that would make sense.   To me, their Cantonese sounds like.... well, it sounds like what we Americans think of when we hear the British speak English.  

The differences in language between Chinese are the same as the differences with food.   Even though it was also all Cantonese people that moved to the mainland U.S., their culture evolved quite separately from our own.   I had no clue what "moo goo gai pan"or "kung pao chicken" or "moo shu pork" was until I moved to the mainland.  Similarly, when I was in a restaurant in California, and I tried to order a mein bang or cake noodle, the waiter had absolutely no idea what I was talking about.   For those of you who don't know, mein bang, is noodles that have been fried and cut into 3'x3' squares, and then covered with the traditional sauces and ingredients.   Because it's prepared like this, you can pick up a whole square and bite it, and as the gravy soaks into it, you have this wonderful contrast between the noodles that are still crispy and the noodles that are now soft and slippery.  And by the way, chow "mein" is pronounced like you're being "mean" to someone, not like it's a lion's "mane".  

So, it is really difficult to answer the question, what is your favorite Chinese restaurant.   I have many different favorites depending on the regional style and type of food.    However, if you were to ask me which was my favorite Old Hawaii-Style Chinese restaurant, the one that most reminded me of my Po Po's cooking, that would be a fairly easy call.   That would be McCully Chop Sui, on the corner of S. King and McCully.   My wife, and her family, would swear by Golden Duck (by the corner of S. King and Piikoi),  but to me McCully Chop Suey was always the best.    My favorite dishes would always be the ones my Po Po would cook for me when I was little.   The top of this list would be the yuk bang or pork hash (yuk is pronounced to rhyme with "hook").   I mentioned earlier how Po Po would cook this for my Goong Goong almost every night, and it was my favorite when I was little.   Out of all the places in town, and there are many, theirs was the one that tasted most like my Po Po's.  The other big one was their kau yuk or steamed pork belly.   Most other places would make theirs with that unnatural red coloring, and the skin on top would be rubbery or fat between the layers too prominent and fatty.  Their was brown like my Po Po's, and everything, all of those umptuous layers would just melt in your mouth.  I also loved their oyster roll (essentially an oyster stuffed with the same pork hash), although my Po Po would steam hers while McCully would deep fry theirs.   I would always go order one of these two along with some crispy gau gee mein, some fu yung dan (egg fu yung), and some beef broccoli, whenever I wanted to feel like I was in Po Po's living room again.   Heck, they even had the same curtains hanging in their window that Po Po had!  

Sadly, like so many other tastes of old Hawaii, they too are closed now.  There's an art gallery where they were now.   But they were such a Hawaii landmark, that the new owners decided to leave up the iconic neon sign.   Now, instead of a beacon of warm grandmother's cooking inside, it's a reminder of those treasured memories past.   There are other fantastic Chinese restaurants on island.   There are even other great Old Hawaii-Style Chinese restaurants.  And as the Chinese community in Hawaii continues to live and grow and evolve, the cuisine will inevitably change and grow along with it.   But, I will always remember McCully Chop Suey, and the way they made it, and the way my Po Po made it.

Everyone goes through an identity crisis growing up.   Children of mixed cultures feel it moreso.   I always felt disoriented when I met friends from China who spoke Mandarin instead of Cantonese?   When I met friends from Hong Kong, who liked Hong Kong-style restaurants better than Hawaii-style Chinese restaurants, and spoke a more "elegant" Cantonese than I do, I always felt a little backwater.  It took a long time to figure out who I was and be proud of it.   Am I Chinese?  Am I American?   Am I Hawaiian?  Ultimately, I'm a little of all of that.  I'm proud to be a Chinese from Hawaii, with our own subculture, language and food.   Eating at places like McCully Chop Suey helped me define and take pride in that identity.   That's who I am.   That's where I come from.   But ultimately.... I'm just me.

Saimin: The Ultimate Comfort Food

If you ask anyone from Hawaii what their favorite comfort food is, there is a high probability that saimin will top their list.    Saimin is to us islanders, what mac and cheese is to mainlanders.    It is perhaps the single, most quintessential, make you feel right at home, relaxed, thinking back on simpler, happier times food there is to us.   And just like there is a world of difference between a $0.99 hamburger from McDonalds and a gourmet 80/20 ground sirloin you would find at a fine steakhouse, there is a huge range of quality when it comes to saimin too.  

Before we begin, let's get one thing completely straight.  True saimin is a dish that is completely unique to Hawaii.   It is NOT Japanese ramen.   Nor is it a Chinese tong mein.  Despite the cravings that we get as college kids for a good cheap pack of Sapporo Ichiban or Cup Noodles, they're not really the true saimin that we're thinking of.    Saimin is a Hawaii born dish, a sort of blending of the different noodle soup dishes from the different cultures that worked our sugar plantations; Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Filipino.  They all kind of contributed to the pot and created something new and unique to these islands.   Saimin noodles are square cut, not round (like udon).   They're actually slightly curly, not entirely straight (like ramen).  The toppings that make a traditional bowl of saimin are also a blending of whatever each culture had on hand, Korean Won Bok (leftover from kim chee making), Chinese red rimmed char siu, Japanese kamaboko (the red and white fishcake), some eggs, green onion, and of course Hawaii's great love, Spam (leftover from our days as a warzone in World War II).  If you eat enough of the noodle soups from the various East Asian cultures, you can recognize the differences between each, and the unique blending that true saimin is.

As I mentioned before, Saimin comes in all different grades and quality.   At home, the gold standards for saimin are the fresh frozen (not dried) packs from S&S or Okahara.   If you're going out, it's on all the menus all over town, at carnival events, even at McDonalds (the first localized product McDonald's ever offered).   While I love eating a good Saimin and McTeri burger combo from McDonald's, and as much as I (like all other Hawaii kids) freaked out when I couldn't get it from McDonald's while at college on the mainland , it's not the everyday common saimin that I'm pursuing here.   The quest I'm on, is for the truest, most uniquely Hawaii, most classic form of tthe dish.    In other words... the perfect saimin.

The first saimin that I really truly loved was from a place called Tanouye's on Waialae Ave (currently the home of Super Pho).    My dad said that when he was in elementary school, Tanouye's was just a lunchwagon, and that he could buy a bowl of their saimin for just $0.25.   When I was a kid, he would take me there, and we'd have a table next to the stone wall which was up to table level.  Practically the whole wall above it was a giant window that they would open so you could watch people pass by on the street, while tucked away behind their willow tree.   It was the kind of feeling feeling you would get if you took a streetside cafe in Paris and dropped it into the middle of Kaimuki.  It was charming.  But it closed, and a number of restaurants have tried to take its place.

When Tanouye's closed, my quest for the ideal saimin was on.   We went all over town, trying different ones.   Some were too salty.  Some too watery.  Sometimes the noodles weren't right.  Some were variations thereof, and not the classic taste that I was hunting for.  Then, I found one that really fit the bill.   It was Washington Saimin, right on King Street just past McKinley High School.   Theirs was just wonderful.   The right kind of noodles, the right texture, the right flavor, the right broth, and such a cheap price too.   Okay the seats were a little too stiff (they were straight 90 degree angles, it was worse than a church pew), but who cared when the saimin was so good.   Whereas Tanouye's was a Japanese family, Washington was a Korean one, which again spoke to how true saimin was a blend of all of our cultures.   But again, sadly Washington Saimin closed a few years ago as well.

Here I was, again without a classic old style saimin that would be there to comfort me and warm me up when I needed it.   I already knew that the other contenders on island just weren't the same.   The thought was completely dismaying.  If I couldn't find anyone else in town that did it for me, and it was exclusively a Hawaii dish, would I never again taste the true saimin?   Was it going to be a memory I could never revist?  Thankfully, I found a new love...  it just so happened not to be on the same island.

X-Large Deluxe Saimin at Hamura's Saimin

 
I happened to be vacationing on Kauai with my sister and her friends, when they brought me to the place where I found not only my new favorite saimin, but one that frankly was better than I had ever had anywhere.  Period.   The place (as you may have figured out already),was, of course,  Hamura Saimin in Lihue, Kauai.  Just walk through the doors and you feel like you've been transported back to a Hawaii of 50 years ago.   There of course will be dozens of people waiting in line to get at seat at their one super long winding communal counter.   And when you finally order, you must get the biggest bowl of their super deluxe saimin with everything in it.   Of course, true saimin, must be accompanied by a yakitori chicken or beef stick on the side.   It would be like ordering a hamburger without fries.   And when you finally get your bowl, you taste all of the history and warm comforting grandma like cooking they put into each spoon.    The noodles are the perfect texture, something you can always tell from handmade, fresh (not frozen or dried) noodles.  The broth, doesn't taste like any ordinary shoyu or dashi based soup, it tastes like ha mai (you know those small dried shrimp) that's been boiled for hours to make the perfect stock.    Not spicy enough for you?  They've got some classic Hawaiian chili pepper water sitting there for you to kick it up.  Every spoon tastes like Heaven.   And when you're done you can top it off with their famous lilikoi pie.   This was like really like meeting the perfect woman and saying "where have you been all of my life??"

Okay... so I'm not going to fly over to Kauai just so I can have a bowl of saimin.   And yes, I still haven't found a saimin place on Oahu that I think can compare.   But just knowing that it's still there is comforting.   Knowing that this treasured piece of our history and culture is still alive somewhere is somehow enough.   Somehow the knowledge that it is still kept safe and hopefully won't be forever lost eases my tormented soul.   If ever Hamura's were to close, I think I would shed enough tears to fill their largest saimin bowl.   But for now.... for now I am happy and comforted.

The Best Part of the Ox

We all tend to love the foods that we grew up eating, and one of my Po Po's specialties was her ox tails. She would cook ox tails for us roughly twice a month, and I they quickly became one of my favorites. She wouldn't make anything fancy like ox tail stew or ox tail soup. She would just make these great simmered ox tails, with some small adornments like shiitake mushrooms and baht gock (star anise) that would bring out the natural flavor of the ox tails. They would truly be fall off the bone tender, and the liquid they simmered in would turn into this slightly sticky, oh so beefy, sauce that I would lick off of my fingers. I remember when my Goong Goong grew older, he would have just about the same thing for dinner every night: 1 ox tail, 1 boiled chicken foot (which we would dip in shoyu), a small piece of yuk bang (pork hash), a bowl of fish head soup, some won bok (napa cabbage), and a bowl of rice.


To people on the mainland, the tail part of a bull might be considered a strange thing to eat, but it's a Hawaii favorite. I understand they're also popular in Jamaica. I even saw Zimmern eat them during his tapas crawl in Spain. When it's done right (meaning it takes several hours to stew), ox tails are extraordinarily tender, truly falling off the bone. They have their own rich beefy flavor, which is partly due to their fattiness. When they're done wrong, there is a thick layer of fat around the bigger pieces that tastes... well, fatty in a bad way. The meat isn't tender, and it has a almost a gristly, fiberousness to it. And worst of all the fat kind of congeals on things when it gets cold. So ox tails take a lot of time and patience to cook right. They're also a little bit unruly to eat, because you've got this bone in the middle with spokes (you know how a spine segement looks) that prevents you from cutting or biting into it gracefully. So when I was little I liked the smaller pieces which I could hold like tiny drumsticks, which didn't have the layer of fat around it that you had to trim off, and I could basically fit the whole end in my mouth and suck off all the meat.


Ox tails soup is a Hawaii favorite. A couple of years after my Po Po passed away, I was still missing her and her ox tails, so I decided to go on a quest for the best ox tail soup. It wasn't exactly what she made, but as a classic Hawaii dish I would have ample selection to try. I spent all summer tasting ox tail soup from different places around town. There were 2 that clearly better than the others. One was no surprise at all, it was the place that everyone considered the best ox tail soup in the islands.... Kapiolani Coffee Shop, located within the Kamehameha Bowling Alley. You may think that a bowling alley would be a funny place to find one of the premier dishes in all of Hawaii, but everyone who really knows their ox tail would know this place. Theirs was a more simple dish, with scant other (visible) ingredients besides the ox tail, some small shreds of bak choi, a shiitake mushroom, a generous helping of chinese parsley (cilantro), and some rice on the side. What made theirs the best was that their meat was perhaps the most tender of ANY place I found around the island, and their broth was the richest most complex broth of any around. When you're talking about ox tail soup, what else matters except for the ox tail and the broth right? I also liked the way their minced ginger was so super fine, it would just dissolve when you dumped a spoonful or two of it in. Sadly, Kapiolani Coffee Shop is now closed. My friend, Jim, was visiting from San Fran one year, and I wanted to take him to the bowling alley and we had discovered it closed to be replaced by a Walgreens. Our lament was truly great. Luckily we found that they moved to a small location by the old Gem's on Dillingham, but that location has now also since closed. I'm told that Asahi Grill on Ward Avenue, is by the same family and still serves their ox tail soup recipie, but it's just not the same as eating it in the bowling alley.

Oxtail Soup at Zippy's

The second place that really caught my fancy, was kind of a surprise. It was the sit down section at Zippy's (shown above). Really? Zippy's?? It seems kind of... anti-climactic, when you're spending all summer hunting down the little known, hidden, hole-in-the-walls with the best ox tail soup, to suddenly find something so good at a huge chain like Zippy's. But we're talking about their sit down portion (which not all Zippys have), and there is definitely a reason why Zippy's is such an island institution. Anyway, compared to Kapiolani Coffee Shop, their meat wasn't quite as tender, but it was almost more... "meaty", if you know what I mean. But what made theirs so good, was the opposite approach at the bowling alley. Theirs was filled with vegetables, mushrooms, peanuts, etc. And the overall combination of these ingredients gives theirs a rich, complex harmony. Even their peanuts (and I don't normally like peanuts in my ox tail soup), don't taste like they added dry roasted peanuts, but more like those Chinese boiled peanuts. In any case, at least Zippy's is still there to enjoy, and hopefully will be for a long time to come.
With all of my questing for the best ox tail soup around that summer, it wasn't until a few years later that I truly found what I thought was the best ox tail in the islands. I was on a business trip to Hilo, and I decided to have dinner at Ken's House of Pancakes. Their ox tail stew was just fantastic! It was so tender, and so rich, and it seemed to just coat my whole mouth with flavor. The meat was just the very definition of succulent. It was probably the closest thing I could find to what my Po Po used to cook. Sorry, I can't afford the airfare to fly over there and take a picture for you, but trust me, if you're ever in the area you MUST try it.
After all these years, I've got my own recipes for ox tail stews. They're not the same as my Po Po's, and I don't think that I could ever re-create her magic. But I'm hoping that my kids and grandkids will think as highly of my ox tails as I did hers.

Lunch at the Pier

So for my first actual blog entry, I wanted to pick something really iconic of Hawaii. Something that truly represented both the unique flavor and culture of the islands. Something that was filled with the best happy memories I could think of. Given the criteria, one thing immediately popped into my head. It's with a certain irony and sadness, I realized that what I settled on no longer exists... The place that I really wanted to blog about, was my favorite lunchwagon down by the pier, the Kanda Lunchwagon.

But let's start at the beginning. For those of you who don't know, Hawaii's most popular food choice, the plate lunch, has it's origins as part of our multi-cultural history. When Hawaii's main industry was sugar (and later pineapple), immigrant workers came from China, Japan, Korea, the Philippines, Portugal, and other places to work on the plantations. Despite being from very different, sometimes antagonistic, cultures, these workers (our grandparents) shared in the hardship of their labor. They eventually found commonality, and one of the factors bonded them together was of course... food. While each culture would cook up something different, they almost all were served upon a bed of rice. So the plantation workers would break for lunch, squat in a big circle (now known as the plantation squat), and share each other's entre upon their own bowl of rice. This was the basis of what we now call our "mixed plate".

As the world evolved, so did this practice. By the '40's and '50's, besides bringing their own lunches to work, many people bought lunch. So to deliver lunch to many people at different worksites, Hawaii became home to the lunchwagon. We're not talking about the kind of junk food that you might get off the back of a truck on the mainland. Plate lunches were always a mixture of the different cultures that spawned it, Chinese, Japanese, Hawaiian, etc., always served with the ubiquitous 2 scoops of rice and 1 scoop of macaroni salad. New York has hot dog carts, L.A. has taco trucks, and Honolulu has lunchwagons.

Sadly, many of of the lunchwagons are disappearing. You can still find them, at U.H and around downtown during lunch. But many of the older ones are gone. This includes the one that was my favorite of all, the Kanda Lunchwagon, down at Kaka'ako Pier. It used to park, just Ewa of Ala Moana Beach Park, right in the parking lot that borders the park and the pier. The line for that one was always at least 8 or 9 people long. And it was well worth it.

I still remember my favorite plate from "the pier" as we used to call it. Their "Large Mixed Plate" consisted of

• 2 scoops rice, 1 scoop mac salad (of course)
• roast pork
• a small piece of meatloaf
• a shoyu shortrib
• sometimes some teri-beef
• a thin triangular slice of luncheon meat
• a shoyu hot dog
• all on a bed of pork long rice
• and if you wanted it, gravy from the roast pork over the rice

It seems like a lot, but it wasn't really that big compared to the gut busting plates you can get these days. Heck, the piece of meatloaf was only about the size of a fig newton. But they gave you a little bit of everything on the menu. And everything was delicious. Even the mac salad, which is done all over town, I remember as being my favorite one. On the surface, it just looked like mayo, macaroni, and some shredded cabbage. I'm not sure what they did to it, but it was always colder and more flavorful than anyone else's. The best thing on the plate though was the long rice. To this day, I have never tasted long rice like that. Not so thin, translucent noodles, in this savory, shoyu pork broth, with bits of cabbage and pork, that just made me want to slurp up every last noodle at the end of my plate.

Even the presentation was unique. They didn't hand em out on those styrofoam lunch containers that every one uses these days. They handed out paper plates, lined with 2 sheets of wax paper, and covered with 2 more sheets of wax paper. They were the only people I knew of, besides my Po Po, who actually used wax paper. It was really old school.

But perhaps the best part of this lunchwagon was the location. My dad would take me down to the pier, buy us a couple of plates, a couple of Diamond Head red creme sodas, and we would walk across the parking lot, sit on the dock and next to fishing boats, and eat lunch, just him and I. I would sit there and watch the tide lap against the rubber tires buffering the boats. Sometimes I'd even see some small fishes (probably Manini) swimming by the boats. It was such a simple little pleasure. But it's the kind of thing you always remember from your Hana Batta days. It's an experience I wish I could've shared with my boys. The Kanda Lunchwagon is gone now, and there is a different wagon that replaced it, but their food just doesn't taste the same.

I was really heartbroken when I found out that the Kanda Lunchwagon had closed. For about a year or two, their appearances at the pier started becoming less frequent, and regular. I kept wanting to take my wife (then girlfriend), down there to share the experience with her, but every time we drove past they wouldn't be there. Until ultimately I found out about their closing. As the lunchwagons disappear, the worry sets in that we're losing a bit of our culture, a bit of our history, a bit of ourselves. I worry more that the people of Hawaii will lose the bond that they formed working on the plantations together, that newcomers won't understand the cultural tolerance we learned by working the sugar cane fields together, growing up together, and sharing our lunches together. More than anything, that is what I want to share with my sons, even if we have to find a new lunch place to build that memory on.

E Komo Mai

So I've decided to start a blog.

Now you may be thinking this this is not an uncommon occurrence. In this day and age after all, blogging is as commonplace a pastime as reading a book or going for hike. But if you're thinking that, then you are failing to comprehend my total aversion to blogs in general.

I for one have always thought that blogging is one of the most inane activites known to man. My former boss put it very succinctly when he said, "Why the Hell do I want to read about how you woke up in the morning and brushed your teeth?" Indeed, I am amongst those who look at Wil Wheaton with utter bewilderment and disdain regarding his career transition. And while I, like many other people, dream about joining the ranks of the historically significant (at least enough to warrant my own Wikipedia page), it seems utter vanity that anyone would discover my long lost journals after I'm gone and want to research my life and times.

So why then, would I willing subject myself to an activity that, in general, makes my brain ache? What could possibly be so compelling that I would find myself willing to embrace this form of expression? The answer, which is almost always the answer for these things, is passion. It all starts with living on an island. When you grow up in Hawaii, once you hit college age, most people find themselves feeling full of wanderlust, feeling like we're trapped on a rock. Then, if you can afford it, you go off to college on the mainland, and you realize just how much you really love that rock in the middle of the ocean, and start longing for the tastes and sounds (particularly the tastes) of home. These waves of wanderlust and homesickness are almost cyclic. Having recently had 2 beautiful sons, travel opportunities have been limited for me, and I found myself itching to explore.

Having limited avenues which to explore, I, like most of the masses, turned to television. In particular, I found myself enamored with the works of Anthony Bourdain and Andrew Zimmern, who have become like personal idols to me. Not only do they get to travel the world, but they get to try all of those fantastic foods from other cultures. This filled me with longing, jealousy, and hunger (literally). Food to me is so much more than mere sustenance. Good food tells you a story about the place it came from, the story about the people who made it. What was at hand at the time. Who where they influenced by. What hardships did they have to undergo. To me the truest mark of a good cook, is being able to take something really humble, and turn it into something really special. When you share a meal, it's about the good times and the happiness that you're sharing. The food is one of those memory triggers that instantly brings you back to those good times. It's about culture. It's about history. And ultimately, it's about pure pleasure.

So I had my great time watching Tony and Andrew galavant around the world, and then they stopped in my own backyard. Here in Hawaii. And I gotta say, between the 2 of them, they did a halfway decent job. But to me, it was like scratching just the tip of the iceberg. So here is where the wanderlust ebbs and the love of the island springs again. As much as I love traveling and seeing new things, whenever my friends come from the mainland, I LOVE playing the host. You know how it is, when you really really love something, you just want to share it and have other people enjoy it as much as you do. I love sharing my favorite things about my island home with them, particularly the foods. So where Tony and Andrew left off, I felt compelled to continue.

So that's what my blog is going to be about. I'm going on a little quest, to capture and share all the different tastes of my beloved island. This is going to be a little trove of memories, of childhood, and growing up here, and festivites, and happy times. I'm going to share some of my favorite places and foods, both recent and far past. I'm not a food critic, so don't be expecting me to give anyone a harsh rating. And I apologize in advance for what may be poor photography. I may have succumbed to writing a blog, but I just can't convince myself to be one of those people who take pictures of all their meals. Any pictures I supply will be subtly captured with my cell phone. Do I really expect anyone to read this? Honestly, not really. But, like siphoning my thoughts into Dumbledore's Pensieve, I just want to capture some of these memories that I can share with my sons years from now.

So.... E Komo Mai, sit back and enjoy the tastes to come...

-Jus