Category Archives: Food

Shrinkage

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[See the note at the bottom of this post.]

Auwe, Diamond Bakery!

I was standing in line at the Kahala Long’s store last weekend and spotted a display of soda crackers at what appeared to be a good sale price. So I grabbed a box and tossed it into the cart with the other items.

It was only later that I realized I had not been shopping defensively enough and had been tricked!

Although the new box looked at first glance like the standard Diamond Bakery soda cracker box, but it was actually much smaller. That became clear when seen side-by-side with the older box already in our pantry.

The old box contained 8 packages of crackers with a total weight of 13 ounces. The new box boasts the same 8 packages, but it weighs only 8.5 ounces.

The difference is that the new crackers are significantly smaller than the traditional Diamond Bakery soda crackers, as you can see in the photos below.

There was no indication on the box that the contents were not the traditional Diamond Bakery crackers, but rather a new, mini version that weighs 35% less than the crackers sold up until now.

Is the company doing to its soda crackers what it previously did to saloon pilots? Passing off a small, inferior version as a suitable replacement for the traditional cracker?

I truly hope not. Just raise the price, don’t wreck the product.

**Note: One of the first comments received added new and important information. Tracy wrote:

Aloha Ian! I think you’re comparing two completely different items. The soda crackers are the larger box and larger cracker but the second one is lightly SALTED soda crackers which were always smaller than the soda crackers.

So I’ll be off to the store to check this out!

Another night of fine dining…

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…in our room, that is.

In part because the company is quite pleasant, in part because wine is much less expensive in our room than in any restaurant.

Tonight it was a meal from Mucca Pizzeria, just a few short blocks way. We discovered Mucca several trips ago, and found that their food is very good.

We ordered online, which uses Clover, a familiar processing system. The order was predicted to be ready in 20 minutes, and I walked over to pick it up. Luckily, the heavy rain and thunderstorms that had been forecast did not materialize, although the weather was quite threatening, and gusty wind funneled between buildings made holding the umbrella a challenge. Luckily, walking on the beach with an umbrella back home was good training for this outing.

And the food was very good. A Caesar salad and pizza, Salsiccia e Funghi (Italian Sausage ~ Seasonal Mushrooms ~ Tomato Sauce ~ Mama Lil’s Peppers ~ Mozzarella). Salad was very good, pizza outstanding.

We’re ready for our flights home later today.

Party on!

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I don’t remember my parents hosting large parties, but apparently they did just that during the first decade of their marriage (they were married in December 1939).

Once they bought their house in 1942, friends gathered in the back yard to cook on the brick BBQ, and play volleyball (or sometimes badminton) using a net that could be easily set up and removed for storage. Permanent footings were buried in the lawn, so they just had to bring the poles out, drop them into the two footings, and string the net between them.

My recollection is that my parents rarely drank alcohol, except when they had guests. And, it seems, more guests meant more aclohol, at least according to this recipe in my mother’s handwriting for a rather potent sounding mix, “Scorpions for 20 people.”

It called for a gallon of oke (referring to Hawaiian okolehao), which might have been more accessible during WWII than commercial whiskey, along with slices of fruit and fruit juice, with the explicit instruction to “let stand for at least 48 hours.”

No, I’ve never tested the recipe.

A successful experiment

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We’ve had our new induction range for several days now. So far, so good. The biggest problem right now is that I have no sauce pans that are compatible, and I expect it to be more than a week before my order of a couple of new pans is delivered.

So last night I tried out the “air fry” mode of the convection oven. When we were at the supermarket, I bought a large russet potato that weighed about a pound. Following the instructions, I washed it and cut it into fries, then soaked them in water for 90 minutes or so. I found conflicting recipes. One said to soak them in ice water. Another advised soaking in hot water. I happened to read the ice water recipe first, so that’s the one I followed.

I thawed a pack of chicken thighs while the potatoes were soaking. The chicken went on the grill outside. Then I dried the fries, mushed them around in a tablespoon or so of oil, added salt and pepper, and spread them in the large air fryer tray that came with the range. It was large enough to handle the full pound of potatoes, no need to cook in batches. And, according to the instructions, no need to preheat the oven. So I chose the air fry mode, set the temperature to 450 degrees, and in went the potatoes.

Somewhere around 25 minutes later, the chicken thighs were done, and the potatoes were ready.

Well, these were not crispy, crunchy fries. I’m not sure if cooking them differently would add a bit of crispiness on the outside. Further experimenting is in order, perhaps with even less oil, or a bit more time. But these were nicely browned on the outside, and were soft inside and potentially addictive.

Now I’m looking forward to further experiments in air frying. Suggestions?

The photo shows the fries on a glass plate. No worries, they weren’t cooked like that. I moved them from the air fryer tray while bringing the chicken in from the grill.