Busy in the kitchen, but not with cooking!

The other day was the male half of this couple's birthday.  He doesn't get excited about food (it's just fuel to him) but whenever the female half of this couple asks him what he wants her to make for him (special days) he always wants either spicy salmon bowls or baked ziti.  We decided to save the baked ziti for our Christmas Eve dinner.  We were ready to head over to Marukai, our local Japanese store for some toro salmon or fatty salmon and tobiko (fish eggs) when our local fish guy called us...he had fresh ahi (tuna).  Oh my.  Although we love spicy salmon bowls, our local fish guy gets his fish right from the fish auction which means very fresh fish at a fraction of the market prices.  We picked up our pound and a half from the fish guy and decided to not fight holiday traffic to pick up the tobiko.

The spicy ahi bowls were a success and the rest of the time in the kitchen this week was spent making Christmas gifts for family and friends.  We've been in the kitchen from pau hana time (after work time) until 1AM every night this week!  No time to cook.  We did bake some lower fat pineapple cupcakes though.

We will post the spicy ahi bowls, pineapple cupcakes and bibimbap recipes soon!  There won't be a lot of cooking this weekend also since we have family coming in from Maui and we decided to have a Korean feast for Christmas lunch :-)

Side note: yesterday we had another holiday get together with a bunch of friends at the Prince Court Buffet at the Hawaii Prince Hotel in Waikiki.   If you're a Marukai Wholesale Market member, take your membership card for a 20% discount for up to 6 people.  The buffet is huge (we forgot our camera).  There were many Dukan or close to Dukan dishes to choose from including a shabu shabu bar where you boil your meats and veggies and use a soy based or sesame based sauce to dip your food in.  The beef on the shabu shabu bar was too fatty for us to eat, but we did have some fresh spinach, oyster mushrooms and a little bit of tofu.  The made to order sushi bar was more than happy to make handrolls minus the rice!  Awesome!

Just a few more holiday gatherings, then it's probably back to Cruise or even some PP days (mini Attack Phase) for us. :-)

In case we don't get to blog before Christmas, hope everyone has a great Christmas!