A POTTERY PAINTING AND AQUAPONICS OUTING

It's almost 16 miles from 15 Craigside Place to the Waiahole Nursery and Garden Center. It's a beautiful drive that takes around half an hour, and there are five ways to get there, three using tunnels through the Koolaus. Our 15 Craigside outing took the middle route, Likelike Highway.

The view from the Center out into Kaneohe Bay is Chinaman's Hat. It's of course an insult to use the term Chinaman, but for some reason that name is tolerated in Hawaii. There is a Hawaiian name, Mikoli'i, but no one uses that. The story of this island has nothing to do with a Chinese man or his hat, but a giant lizard and Pele's sister Hi'iaka. During low tide you can actually walk there from Kualoa Park, a distance of a little more than a quarter mile. The peak is at 210 feet high.

The highlight of the tour was being instructed by a 7-year old teacher on how to paint pottery and transplant two Hawaiian plants into it. She was really good, but I couldn't understand what she was saying because everyone these days still wears a mask and my hearing is not perfect. Ironically, we retired people felt like we were in a second-grade class.

You can see what we were provided, plus an assorted of paint tubes. My great regret is that I wasted a lot of good paint.

Then we went on an aquaponics tour. I'm particularly interested in this technology because I have three aquaria and a lot plants which I want to link into a cohesive self-supporting system that can take care of itself when I'm away on a trip. Well, after seeing what I saw, I can forget about that bit of ambition:

Those are colorful tilapias.

We picked up Hawaiian plates and I talked the group into taking them back to 15C, for I had beer and poke waiting. At home I decided to also have a local drink, either a Mai Tai or Blue Hawaii. I chose the latter, for it began at the Hilton Hawaiian Village in 1957 and I love the color. Basically, Blue Curacao, rum, vodka, pineapple juice and citrus.

Here is the Hawaiian plate, with lomi lomi salmon, poi, squid luau and laulau, plus my poke enhancement ingredients (that tannish small chunk is kazunoko):

The squid luau and enhanced poke were great. The laulau was undistinguished, with even the 15C version better. The poi was almost totally white and funny tasting, and this came from the famous Waiahole Poi Company. I then had dessert...haupia, a coconut pudding.

I haven't exactly decided where to place my painted pottery Hawaiian plants:

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