Our weekly subject of chocolate seems to always fall on Wednesdays. So we’re going to appoint this day to the marvelous chocolate discoveries in Hawaii. We realize coffee goes really well with chocolate, so here’s a reminder of some of the best coffee’s we’ve ever had (so far): Akiane and Coffee’s of Hawaii.
This week it’s FUDGE. We have a winner in the Really Hawaiian 2009 Chocolate Fudge category – the blue ribbon goes to HAWAIIAN FUDGE SAUCE. Ummmm. We found them at the Made in Hawaii Festival this past weekend. The ono’licious flavors were a treat and we frequently hit up the jar for more while we strolled around the show.
Wrap up from the Made in Hawaii Festival has been one big memory blast after another as we review the products, business cards, notes and in some cases, recipes. And how very exciting to hear back from a lot of our new friends, that the show was successful and the turn out more than expected. The Statehood Commemoration (holiday on Friday) sure added to the numbers and it was good to see the ‘ohana supporting Made in Hawaii products and services on that day.
In all we have just under 200 special and unique products to share with you over the coming weeks. In addition to all the other discoveries from other sources, so we’re going to start publishing more often to speed up the process in presenting all these great finds.
See you soon with more updates … and some thinking on marketing. We uncovered a huge gap in the online opportunities for most of the presenters at the show. We’ll be sharing ideas and information on successfully promoting your products online.
Aloha – today (Sunday) was the final day of the Made in Hawaii Festival. GREAT show – felt packed on Friday and Saturday. Today not so busy – but it is also the best time for great buys. Now, most everything was truly Made in Hawaii, but some of the items narrowly qualified. Most of all tho, there was something for everyone!
To all the fun folks we met – we’ll be in touch after a little break from the show and right after we close up the bag of Hawaiian chips, wash off off the Hawaiian chocolate fudge from our face with hand made Hawaiian soap, finish the organic chicken chili, gift wrap the adorable personalized baby blanket for Anna, send Mom her favorite oil and sunscreen lotion, call Princess and the girls at the office to tell them about the coffee’s we found (they live off the stuff), and sort out the over 200 incredibly and unique ReallyHawaiian.com finds from the show.
Arriving at the show at around 11am we were immediately overwhelmed with the incredible number of ono’licious food products. And it was almost lunch time so of course everything was "Really Hawaiian" to our hungry tummies. We talked story first to make sure the yummy was "really" made in Hawaii then we dug right in. WOW we have some really fabulous treats to dish about in our October edition for the foodies out there. You are in for some Really Hawaiian treats. Ok, here’s a sample – Ahi Jerkey – no kidding folks, this stuff is just fantastic. Made by Hawaii Fish Bites, and only found in select stores (we’ll be connecting you directly in our September edition). We’re all used to beef jerky but just wait to get your hands on this mouth watering stuff. Another BIG fav at the show are the t-shirts Big is Back – and "Biggah mo Bettah" line of t-shirts. From 5x to XL (smallest size is XL). Hand made on the Big Island, these tee’s are branded with what we love best about Hawaii – a great attitude.
ReallyHawaiian.com talked story with over 50 really Hawaiian companies today – Mahalo to everyone for your sharing with us your story. We can hardly wait for tomorrow and more incredible finds. It’s also really hard to keep a secret and we have about 49 of them coming your way!
This annual event features over 500 vendors from around the islands promoting Made in Hawaii products and services. There will be food demonstrations by Hawaii’s top culinary artists (we’re there for the samples), and lots of musical entertainment for the over 35,000 visitors including buyers from around the world.
If there is a particular product / category you would like to know more about, please let us know and we’ll source it for you at the show! email Ginger for special requests.
If you tried to access the ReallyHawaiian.com site today you were stopped short in your tracks. We apologize for that. ReallyHawaiian.com uses a software called WordPress. It’s a wonderful, powerful, sophisticated tool for building and managing websites. We love it, and appreciate the folks at WordPress.org for making this available. However, as with all things technical, glitches can happen, no they DO happen.
We upgraded to a newer version and changed some of our functionality. Worked great for about 3 weeks and then the database become fractured, and well it finally fell to pieces. Thankful for backups and our very intelligent technical team, we were able to recover everything, not one little bit missing.
During the recovery process, it was decided to take a bike ride and clear our brain cache before finishing off the final database initiation. Riding close to the ocean, the salt air and dodging tourists on Alii Drive (Kailua-kona) is a wonderful meditation. There’s absolutely nothing we can’t do after that.
Today is Aloha Friday. Translation – happy the week is over, time to celebrate. No more ’til Monday. Very similar to "Pau Hana" – but for the whole week not just the single day. ~ Aloha Friday everyone, where ever you are.
Our office is on the Big Island, Hawaii. We are the most Southern island in the Hawaiian chain. A fact that sort of saved us from a trashing by Felicia – the hurricane that downgraded to a tropical storm this week. Our thoughts are with our sister islands who are not as fortunate, surely some high winds, rains and possible flooding are headed their way. Malama pono.
On the mainland, this is probably no big deal. But in Hawaii – the weather has a long history of obedience from the gods and goddesses of the islands. So when there’s caution in the winds, we all stop to consider our ‘ohana, the ‘aina and anyone needing help should disaster strike. This Hawaiian chant is asking the wind god, Hilo (Tahitian "Hiro"), to stop blowing the wind so hard, stop the turning of the sea (the large bowl of water). Asking the wind to die down and make it come very tiny. When the wind dies the waves and ocean currents die:
PA MAI, PA MAI
KAMAKANI O HILO E
LAWE AKE KA IPU NUI
HO’O HAI KA IPU LI,I LI’I
(REPEAT)
We’ll be back in a a few days … until then Malama Pono (be careful) everywhere.
UPDATE: this just in from our friend with Civil Defense in Oahu (Diamond Head bunker):The National Weather Service informed us today that they can no longer track Felicia because it is losing its identity. Remnant wind and rain are being integrated with the prevailing trade wind flow. Mahalo Ke Akua!
p.s. We did not realize storms could have an identify crisis – our best to Felicia.
One day last month while working in the production room, a quiet came over the place. This was not our usual hip hop blaring kinda day. We were cranking up the work load and in need of some tunes to keep the vibe really Hawaiian. Thinking inside the box – we researched Hawaiian music. That brought us to the find MELE.COM – The world’s online source for Hawaiian music since 1995. WOW they really rock the Hawaiian vibe nicely. Mahalos to Mele.com for (everything) introducing us to the fabulous Don Tiki, Arthur Lyman and Martin Denny. These three albums pretty much floated our canoe for the entire production of our August edition. Unfortunately mele.com no longer carry these albums so were were forced to go to Amazon where we set up a ReallyHawaiian account and will donate all the proceeds to our favorite charity – the Hawaiian Humane Society, Inc. That’s ReallyHawaiian.com style.
Do check out mele.com for Hawaiian music – in Hawaii we produce some da’kine sounds that’s for sure.
Actually our 2nd edition of ReallyHawaiian.com launched on the 1st – our blog is just catching up!
In our newest edition (’Aukake) we flipped over a few finds such as the book Potluck by Cathey Tarleton – a very funny, talented wahine who moved with her husband and three parrots to Hawaii and is sharing stories of what she’s learned so far. For those of us with a similar moving experience, we can so relate to our first time going over to friends for a get together. The sharing of food and good times goes way beyond anything learned on the mainland, except at Thanksgiving time. In Hawaii any get together at any time of the year is considered a luau and everyone brings something to share. We give thanks to Hawaii for the bounty of our ‘ohana.
