Holiday Pig Out

Along the way to Ka'ena Point (it was very windy)

Wow, we tried to be good this weekend, but it lasted all of about 3 hours!  We had a busy but great Christmas weekend.  We haven't had time to post recipes, but we did manage to cook a couple of dishes this weekend.  This week will be another busy week with friends in town (lots of friends), then we're doing some neighbor island hopping for New Years to see family.

We intended to cook a healthy dish on Friday night, but at the spur of the moment we decided to drive out to Ka'ena for a sunset hike.  The hike lasted about an hour and we walked quickly due to the sun setting...so the good part, we got in exercise.  It was VERY windy.   The bad - to get there from town, the drive is over and hour and with holiday traffic, even longer. It's nothing compared to driving on the mainland United States, it's really the amount of cars on our island that makes driving so long.

It was getting late and we were driving around a town called Kapolei looking for a restaurant to eat at but nothing called out to us.  Finally, starving, we decided to stop at a place at a pizza joint near the airport (still about 20 minutes from home without holiday traffic).  Celebration meal for the week.  The pizza was tasty (closer to deep dish), but too doughy for us.

The next day (Christmas Eve), we decided lunch needed to be a healthy dish since we had already planned our Christmas Eve Pasta Night like we usually do.  Ended up trying a dish called Konbu Maki, an Okinawan dish made with pieces of pork rolled in seaweed and simmered in a soy flavored sauce.  Asian families usually eat this during New Year's ...it took a long time to make, we can see why our families don't have this regularly.  Will post the recipe...it is a healthy dish and you can make a bunch of the rolls for a few meals.  Every Christmas Eve we make some sort of pasta dish, this year we made a Baked Rigatoni which was a cross between our lasagna and baked ziti recipes.  Will post this recipe too.  We considered it another celebration meal, even though we had a celebration meal the day before but we used whole wheat pasta and low fat cheeses.

Ka'ena Sunset

On Christmas Day, another celebration meal.  Uncle's family brought over a Korean feast - nothing was Dukan.  Chap Chae - a Korean stir fried noodle dish with definitely a lot of sesame oil, kalbi  - Korean grilled short ribs, fish jun - battered and deep fried fish, and seafood pa jun - or seafood pancake.  Everything was delicious, but as mentioned, not Dukan!

We finally did get a healthy dish in last night, will post this recipe too...we used a Kung Pao Chicken sauce recipe, Dukan'd it and used thin slices of pork.  It was great, we didn't miss the oil normally used in stir fries.  This recipe was inspired by Flamidwyfe's blog...she always has sliced beef stir fried with garlic and scallions or cilantro, it made us hungry for stir fries!

We did gain a pound each and now we're going on vacation!  Yikes!  Luckily the vacation will include some neighbor island hiking.

Hope everyone had a great Christmas!