This Should Be Fun: Recipes (sale, to buy, living)

[NoMoreSTL]

Hello again everyone!

If you don't remember me, I joined this board because I'm moving to Oahu in late November this year. One of the main concerns I have about day-to-day living is our food budget. We love to eat great-tasting food, so PB&J every day just isn't going to cut it.

I love cooking and my fiancee and I are amateur foodies, so the cooking from scratch thing shouldn't be a problem for us.

However, I know it's way more cost effective (and good for the environment and community) to buy local when possible. Well folks, I've lived in the midwest my whole life and I'm sure there's a TON of differences in what's "local" between St. Louis and Oahu. What exactly is local on Oahu from season to season? I'm sure there's LOTS. I've searched this forum for favorite HI recipes and it surprisingly didn't turn up much.

Does everyone have a favorite frugal & delicious recipe that uses local and/or inexpensive ingredients? I am compiling recipes to try when I get to the island so we can stretch our food dollar and still eat well.

Main dishes, soups, desserts, side items, unique salads, BBQ/grilled, baked goods, slow cooker recipes... Whatever you've got that's tried and true- I want to give it a shot!

I'll even share one of my favorite recipes to get things started. It's super fast and easy, and if you've got a delicious version of your own, post it!

(My version of) Guacamole:
Avocados
diced tomatoes
diced yellow or red onion
salt
pepper
garlic powder
Sour cream
fresh squeezed lime juice
Fresh tortilla chips for dipping

*I know there are no amounts. Guac simply isn't an exact science in my household and you just have to adjust the ingredients according to taste and company! Don't worry, you can't mess it up. *

1. Shell avocado(s) with a spoon and remove the hard pit in the middle. Discard pit and skin/shell. Cut avocado(s) into small chunks to make mashing easier & put them in a sturdy bowl big enough to accommodate your guac.

2. Dice tomato and onion to desired chunkiness; add to bowl with avocado.

3. Add in salt, pepper, garlic powder and sour cream to taste.

4. Mash away with a strong fork! This is a good time to get those frustrations out.

5. Add fresh squeezed lime juice to taste and mix it in.

6. Done! Serve with fresh tortilla chips or the ones that were on sale today at the grocery store. Guac is also great on all kinds of stuff: on chicken, in wraps, sandwiches, tacos & burritos, etc. Omit or add things as you like, it's hard to ruin Guacamole.

Your turn!

[hotzcatz]

You will have fun here, the avocados are huge! I've seen some about the size of footballs but softball size ones are much more common. They also show up in green, yellow-green, red, purple and with smooth skins or bumpy skins.

Fish around here comes in big thick slabs and you can grill it on the barbeque. Yum! Other fish shows up sliced on a plate with a side of daikon and wasabi. That's the expensive fish especially around New Years.

You probably won't find the BBQ sauce you are used to since most of the BBQ sauce around here is a ginger/shoyu teriyaki sort of BBQ sauce. There is Bob's BBQ on Dillingham which has the BBQ sauce you are probably more familiar with.

There is a lot of rice here however none of it is Uncle Ben's converted rice. There is a whole aisle of rice at the grocery store so there will be lots to choose from.

[MickeyE]

For a bunch of recipes try HECO > Home Hawaiian Electric Company and go to the recipes section.

Mickey

[hotzcatz]

Spam pizza yet they list "luncheon meat musubi". What's with that??? No Spam musubi? NO loco moco? Ha! They've been missing out on some good recipes, those HELCO folks.

Today we picked up two big avocados from one tree and the tree by the newspaper box dropped seven avocados. Fortunately we found folks to eat most of them although the neighbor's chickens had to help to get them all eaten up.