Home Cooking: By the light of the moon

Pittsburgh, Pa.

Home Cooking: By the light of the moon

Sunday, February 15, 2004

By Suzanne Martinson, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

NAPILI, Maui -- Vacations can be a frantic exercise in go-go-go, do-do-do, but relaxation comes with the territory in Hawaii, where getting a suntan is not an entry in a To Do list, but a way of life.

My husband, Ace, and I have been fortunate to mellow out in Hawaii five times, amazing for a woman who believes, in the immortal words of Peter of Peter, Paul and Mary, that swimming is staying alive while you're in the water. My husband arises at 4 a.m. every day, even while "mellowing" on vacation. The day we left, Ace shoveled 5 inches of snow out of our driveway in the freezing rain -- well worth it, because within 24 hours he was again up at dawn watching the Pacific Ocean lapping into Honokeana Cove.

This is our fourth year at the cove, and the other 60 or so residents make it easy to see what it's like to turn funning into a full-time job.

This year's chapter we shall call "Moonlight and Pineapple over Hawaii."

The shift in time zones and climates couldn't have been more dramatic. The Saturday night before we left, we were ski-deep in snow in Grand Valley, near Titusville, Crawford County, viewing a third of the moon on a minus-10-degree night at Camp Wesley Woods at our church's annual winter weekend. Forty-eight hours later, the same slip of a moon was hanging over the cove with a whisper of the trade winds at 70 degrees. The temperature hits the mid-80s in the daytime.

And then there is the food. The farmers' market here is a delight. Three times a week, bright young people push pineapple grown on the island, avocado, ugly oranges that hide their delectable taste inside, bananas like you've never imagined and, my personal favorite, papayas.

UPSIDE-DOWN TIP
Leisure time can be an impetus for trying something new.
When a cake mix arrived in our rented condo kitchen with a recipe for Pineapple Upside-Down Cake, we tried it. It wasn't as good as the from-scratch cake I had made on our first trip here, but it was good.
We used fresh pineapple rather than canned and substituted POG (pineapple-orange-guava) juice for the water called for in the Betty Crocker cake mix. We covered the bottom of the condo's 9-by-13 nonstick pan with fresh, chopped pineapple and then sprinkled on 1/2 cup of chopped pecans.
Do not insult the cook who cut up the pineapple by suggesting fake whipped cream or imitation vanilla.

The glowing salespeople get personal on this sale. "When do you plan to eat these papayas?" they ask and then paw through the boxes of fruit to pick ones to take you through to the next visit. Talk about addictive!

It took me three days to realize I was the only papaya lover in the house. I eat a half of papaya each morning. It's a complicated recipe, in which you cut the beautiful orange-fleshed fruit in half, strip its seeds, then squeeze on lime juice. It goes down so easily but all the eating is left to me.

The farmers' market is also a source of "processed food," which in Maui means the best granola we've ever tasted, made with coconut, dried banana, macadamia nuts (nature's gift) and crunchy whole grains. We love the macadamia-banana muffins and the guacamole dip and revel in our first incursion into passion fruit-cream cheese dip.

As is my wont, my first nonfood purchase is a cookbook. I prefer community books, and this year it is the "Kapalua Cooks: A Collection of Favorite Recipes from the Employees of Kapalua Land Company," which was made more delightful by the hand-written addition of 2 1/2 cups flour to the recipe for Congo Squares. I smiled because I know all about leaving out an integral ingredient in a recipe.

Among the recipes we tried was a crab dip -- so easy, it's embarrassing -- that we made for the cove's weekly sunset pupu party (pupus are appetizers).

Luckily, I had my sous chef in house, or as Mom jokes, "I'm her sue-she chef." While I collect cookbooks, she collects golf hats. The latest in the line is one from Kaanapali, where she and Ace were mystified when their golf card contained no map of the course. A friendly young Hawaiian came up to explain why.

"The cart had a global positioning device," Ace said, explaining that a computer connected to a satellite told them where they were on the course. "It not only told you where the hole was and how far, but where the sand traps and water hazards were."

Mom, who's 84, gets a kick out of breathing the same air as the golf gods, but the closest I got to them was riding a sorrel gelding named after Tiger Woods. Ironwood Ranch names all its trail horses after famous people. Our sunset ride had spectacular views of the oceanfront and nearby Molokai, with the entertaining chatter of a longtime employee Virginia Ross, who estimates that she has led 19,000 rides.

Tiger threw a front shoe near the end of our two-hour ride as we were heading home through the ripening, sweet-smelling pineapples.

"I'll get off and lead Tiger back to the stable," I say.

"You take my horse -- you paid for the ride," Virginia says.

This cowpoke has more insights into human nature than any armchair psychologist. "I once had a woman ask if the sun was going to set in front of Molokai or behind it. I told her, I knew what she'd been doing during science class -- smoking."

Horses know immediately if you know how to ride. If you don't, they immediately detour to the tall grass or the pineapples. Horses love those sweet pineapples. When you sign up, you have to mark from 1 to 10 according to experience. You also have to reveal on the registration how much you weigh.

Supposedly, Michelle Pfeiffer's rider had shaved the truth. "I'm sorry, Michelle," he whispered as the horse huffed and puffed up a steep hill. "I don't really weight 210 pounds. I lied."

Whether you're on horseback or afoot, the challenge of any vacation is seeing if the calories consumed eating off the land, so to speak, will be offset by activity, which in my case includes snorkeling (no calories consumed there, because Ace drags me through the cove's water on a boogie board), swimming in the shallow end of the pool (staying alive while in the water doesn't use many), riding horseback (Tiger did all the climbing through the wet jungle) and walking (swiveling the neck to take in humpback whales, sunsets, sunrises and "50-percent off" sale racks took up some energy).

I may come out even. Even if I don't, make mine Maui. Always.

RELATED RECIPE

pgtested

Nancy's Crab Dip

Nancy Cross of the Mercedes Championships held at Kapalua says this dip is quick and easy and everybody LOVES it! Presumably that includes Tiger Woods and this year's winner, Stuart Appleby.