Friday, December 17, 2010

Hana Treehouse!

So as I mentioned, Aaron and I just went to visit my dad in Maui. We had  a great time...especially when we went to Hana and stayed in a TREEHOUSE! To be honest, it was an adventure...TONS of mosquitoes, lots of spiders, toilet outside in the jungle, insanely large avocados were pummeling the roof all night. Needless to say, I did not get much sleep. But we could see the ocean from where we were and the drive to Hana was gorgeous.

Here we are at the beach:

 Here we are having mai tais! Yum!



 Here we are in the bottom of an extremely scary lava tube. I felt like Indiana Jones!
 Here is the inside of the treehouse!
 These flowers grew all around the treehouse wild. It was literally in the middle of the jungle. We had to drive through mud to get to it, and then we had to hike through lots more mud to get up to the treehouse. There were no people around...except menehunes!!!
 These are the towels for the shower that was outside. Not a good idea with the amount of mosquitoes everywhere! Seriously, we got eaten.
 Here is the firemaster bringing us light...since there was no electricity!
 The man that owns this property has built treehouses all over the world. He wrote a book about it and Aaron was taking a look.
 See all those citronella candles in the background? They didn't really work that well. There were all kinds of dead bugs inside the candles in the morning.
 In the background is the ocean. It's about 1.5 miles away. It was raining like crazy.
 This is where we ate our dinner which was purchased at Mana Foods which was the coolest store in a cute little town called Paia. In the background you can see the "bathroom".

 This is the side of the treehouse. Right below we found 5 pound avocados which were knocked off in the middle of the night. They could have killed us! There were tons of guavas and other things that the storm had knocked off branches. It was wild.
 The treehouse was three stories with the bedroom in the middle. The top floor was really cool with great view but it had a grass roof which was ineffective against all that rain, so we stayed on the middle floor most of the time.

 The sun came out in the morning and it was so pretty.

 We had dinner at Lahaina Grill one night and the famous Amanda made an appearance! We had a blast catching up since we hadn't seen each other since high school.

Here are me and my dad. 


All in all...a great trip to Maui. Lots of relaxing, healthy foods, lots of exercise. It was the first vacation in a while where I actually lost a few pounds! Aaron and I were so active the whole time. My dad and I also took lots of long walks, which was lovely! I must warn you, if you decide to do the treehouse, bring lots of bug spray! It was not for the faint of heart. 

Tidbits

Hi Bloggies! Well...it's been a while. I don't really have an excuse: work, travel, yoga? Where have I been? Well, I have been cooking lots of vegetable delights (much to the chagrin of poor Aaron) and have been working, was in Maui, and have been having fun. I love blogging but am not good at keeping up with it, clearly.

Moving on, let's talk about some cooking tidbits.

These cookies from Eat, Live, Run are wonderful. I made some and brought them on a trip to Maui to visit my dad for Thanksgiving. I highly recommend them. I think mine were made even better with freshly harvested walnuts from a good friends family farm!

This recipe for soba noodles and other delicious ingredients made a great introduction to vegetarian cooking for my dad in Maui. Made with farm fresh baby eggplants from Hana Fresh, which Amanda so perfectly displayed here. I substituted Mango with pineapple and it was delish!

I have a new found love for cabbage...really! I have never really liked it before, but it's so crunchy and versatile, I am really digging it.

Here are some cabbage ideas:

Cabbage, apple, and nut slaw: Shred some green cabbage, slice some apples, toss with lemon juice or apple cider vinegar, olive oil, salt and pepper. Top with pinenuts or walnuts...absolutely wonderful. Even Aaron really liked this.

Steamed cabbage with ume vinegar and flax oil: Gently steam some cabbage (this works well with bok choy too) but leave some crunch. Top with flax see oil, a dash of ume plum vinegar, sesame seeds and salt. OMG. Sounds so simple but really, really, really tasty and good for you!

Shredded cabbage tastes great mixed into green salads, topped on tacos, and sauteed into stir frys. Give it a whirl!

We recently celebrated Aaron's promotion at work by dining out at this restaurant. Holy moly. This place is not joking around! Sapporo on draft, hot hand towels, freshly made pickled cabbage, gorgeous dishes and glasses, wonderfully fresh fish, lots of veggie options, perfect Japanese decor...I think we found our new favorite sushi place.

Last, I have had lots of cooking failures lately. I mean...so bad I threw the stuff out. Am I off, or is it just trying new dishes that don't always work? Probably the latter. I am going to keep trying new stuff and hopefully I have more wins then failures.