However, I love 4-H and I was really curious about what 1980s kids were cooking up for Hawaiian 4-H clubs, so I picked up 4-H Local and Ethnic Food Show 1983 (Aiea, Pearl City, Weipahu, Wahiawa, and Honolulu 4-H clubs) despite its relative newness and outdated title. (All foods are ethnic foods of some sort! I assume that the title means that the collection features recipes from Asian/ Pacific Islander communities.)
While the little girl cooking(?-- It looks like the pot is on a cutting board!) on the cover has an adorable expression on her face, I'm seriously worried about her arms being way too long for the rest of her body. Plus, her severely pigeon-toed stance suggests she might need some medical intervention.
I wasn't quite sure what to expect from the book, but I guessed that Spam might be incorporated somehow since this is a Hawaiian book.
I was right! The fish cakes feature Spam as well as fish cake.
And if you're a fan of wonton, the book has a Spam version.
The Spam recipes are all more imaginative than Spam, Spam, Spam, egg, and Spam, so the diner in Monty Python should have some real competition.
I had to keep reminding myself that the recipes were from Hawaii, as sometimes the titles would throw me off. For example, When I saw this one, I immediately imagined macaroni and cheese baked in a muffin tin with a pine nut topping.
Of course, in Hawaii Pine-Mac Muffins are sweet pineapple and macadamia nut baked goods.
I kept thinking that recipes were very alarming, as so many of them inspired their writers to scream "Ono!"
Ono! Banana Muffins are leveling the city! Then I found out that ono (or more properly 'ono?) means delicious. So there were no recipes for fire-breathing foods with death rays or laser-beam eyes (except in my imagination).
I loved that the recipe book was clearly printed by a company that must usually have printed books for the Midwest and New England, as the clip art did not often match up to anything on the page it adorned.
The pizza has just about as much in common with the Deep-Fried Walnuts Chicken as it does with anything else on that page (which is to say nothing). It's possible I overlooked something, but I don't think there is even a pizza recipe in the book, but the publisher in Waverly, Iowa, had pizza clip art, dang it! They were going to use it somewhere.
That's not to say that the Midwest had no influence at all out in Hawaii. The Hawaiians might not be eating traditional meat loaf, but they had Tuna Tofu Loaf:
They found out that Manapua (filled buns) could be waaay easier with the help of a tube of refrigerated dough:
And when it's always hot outside, well, the charms of a Jell-O salad are hard to overlook.
The Hawaiians just have to throw in some macadamia nuts so it's clear that this is NOT THE SAME THING as a Midwestern Jell-O salad. (They would probably prefer to use fresh pineapple rather than canned, too, but then it would never set up.)
There are plenty of recipes that seem like they might be pretty authentic (at least to a completely clueless reader like me). I'll leave you with this interesting recipe for sweet or salty filled buns:
Aloha from your clueless Midwestern friend! Dream warm dreams. Spring should be coming....
Interesting that a Hawaiian cookbook was printed on Iowa. I did know what ono meant thanks to the psych teacher at my second high school. She was married to a a man of Japanese descent who was from Hawaii, and used pidgin to demonstrate language acquisition because nobody would know what she was saying.
ReplyDeleteThat sounds like an interesting class! Actually, a lot of the custom cookbooks for fundraisers are from Iowa. The major publisher for those is in Iowa.
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