My Great American Road Trip – Hawaii

I have a couple rules for this blog. They’re pretty simple – don’t buy anything that I can’t use again if there are leftovers and don’t eat anything gross. I broke both of those rules in during my imaginary trip to Hawaii.

Sunday’s are the worst. During the week I have lots of work meeting and zoom calls, and on Saturdays I have a pilates class and a standing zoom brunch, but I don’t have anything scheduled for Sundays, and the day goes very slooooooowly. In order to put off eating Spam for as long as possible, I walked across the Venetian Causeway that connects Miami Beach to Miami, passed many lovely estates including the one that served as home to Tony Montana.

In Hawaii fashion, I had a coconut water when I got to Miami, and then turned around and headed back – working my way through several podcast episodes

When I couldn’t put it off any longer, I settled in to make something with Spam. Much of the iconic food of Hawaii is slow-cooked underground, so as much as I would have liked to make Lau Lau or  Kalua pork, they weren’t in the cards. Poi is not readily available on the beach, so despite my best efforts, Spam seemed to be my best bet. And nothing, apparently is more iconic than Spam Musubi – sushi minus the fish, plus Spam. Step one is to marinate Spam in soy and oyster sauce and sugar. I added some ginger.  Then you wait. While I waited, I went looking through a box of old photos and found a few from my long-ago trip to Hawaii with friend Deborah. We drove the exhilarating Hana Highway, were pampered at the Four Seasons in Maui, and decompressed in a little house on a black sand beach in Kauai. I loved that trip and the scent of fresh ginger flowers will always take me back there.

Making my way back up from the rabbit hole, I had to make some sushi rice, which is white rice flavored with some sugar (so much sugar in Hawaii), and rice wine vinegar, stirred til the liquid is absorbed and the rice is sticky.  You form it into little sushi shapped balls, and place on a strip of nori. The Spam is fried a couple minutes on each side and then placed on top of the rice and the nori wraps it like a ribbon.

I felt like I deserved a break since I was eating Spam, so I served it with a pina colada and some green beans (not Hawaiian, but I’m desperate for greens.

The Spam tasted like a hot dog, sort of. The rice was great. Overall it was fine, but I threw out the rest of the Spam. The string beans were great. And, you know, I like pina coladas.