Something Special for Fathers Day
With Father’s Day approaching quickly, I hope all of you are planning to do something special for those Dads in your life.
June is a big month for my Jim, father of 5–he turned 51 on the fourth, celebrates Father’s Day and plus, we have our wedding anniversary as well (23 years!)
We were married at sunset on Waikiki Beach at the Moana Hotel–truly a perfect setting. Jim likes the rock in this photo because he says it means our marriage is ‘solid’!
We had 120 guests with an incredible menu with wine pairings. My Mom made scrolls for each of the guests with the menu–I’ll have to dig one of those out of the attic to see what we had–it all seems like a fairytale-like blur to me now. I do know it started off with a Champagne toast with strawberries before we went in to dinner…
Here is the proud papa! Not the best photo, but this was a blustery day at the Polynesian Cultural Center on a visit to Oahu back in 2003.
And here is Jim when he was about 10 years old when he lived in Hawaii Kai. What a cutie. You can see he hasn’t lost any of that zest for life!
We have been on a flat bread pizza kick for a few weeks now and where once I loathed ‘pizza nights” (they were not my favorite nights–‘they’ meaning store bought pizzas–bleh), now I look forward to them. Jim has taken up making the dough. We use this recipe (http://www.food.com/recipe/california-pizza-kitchen-pizza-dough-307437) because this is our favorite pizza place when we travel. Just a note: instead of the sugar, we used our vanilla honey (add link) which made the dough utterly delectable! We roll the dough very, very thin, brush it with a scant amount of olive oil, bake it until lightly browned and then flip it to crisp the underside as well.
Once they are par-baked, we slather them with our BBQ sauce, cheese, vanilla caramelized onions and pan fried-diced Portuguese sausage. Pop them back in the oven for just a few minutes until the cheese is bubbly and then let them cool–if you can wait that long! We also made some with pesto and shrimp that were really tasty. I love that there is not a ton of dough to chew through so the flavors of what is on top is what shines, and the crispness of the dough adds great texture.
This past Friday I made some pork and fennel sausage and instead of making flat bread pizzas, we made calzones. We filled them with the sausage, mozzarella, Peccorino-Romano, sautéed mushrooms and onions and served them alongside a dipping marinara sauce that I loaded up with veggies. I always make a big chopped salad and top it off with our Champagne Vinaigrette to go with our pizzas. This weekend we watched a cute old movie–Mr. Mom–the youngest boy had a blanket he called Wooby which is really weird because I had a blanket (up until I was engaged, I think!)–and I called mine Wubby!
The beer in the back ground of this photo was created by Ipo, who we traded some vanilla beans for about two years ago. He promised he would make us his home brew of a Vanilla Stout called Wakataua. He was so gracious to stop by and bring Jim a bottle to try–he loved it! Hopefully he’ll make some more so we can serve it at one of our dinners. Don’t forget–our Mid Summer’s Night Dream, themed dinner is almost full and our July 26th. Dinner is filling up quickly. There will be live jazz (courtesy of Brandon & Emma) and the July dinner has speaker and author (and my Dad!) Dr. Gary Fuller speaking on the food that the Polynesians brought to Hawaii. Where else can you get good food, good music and learn something new? If you’d like to attend, call us at 808-776-1771 to secure your seats.
Books we’re reading:
Jim– All Creatures Great and Small by James Herriot (and he loves it and has read aloud to all of us on many occasions some of the funny situations the English country veterinarian gets into)
Tracy– Chestnut Lane by Maeve Binchy (I love her characters and the way she brings Ireland to life)
What are you reading this summer? Do you have any favorite pizza toppings–please share them as I foresee many, many pizza nights to come in our home this summer!
