Aloha Friends,

I love having plants in my home that remind me of Kauai. .Lush green plants with beautiful bright flowers. It's fun to take those same plants and landscape them into a mini garden. Like my own little Hawaii island on my tabletop! Here's my most recent mini garden....

I used the old pot from my previous mini garden (check out my March 2016 post) and just added fresh potting soil. I picked up a few new house plants and a beautiful orchid. I kept the orchid in the plastic pot it came in so it wouldn't be directly in the soil. After I had the plants arranged where I wanted them in the pot, I covered the surface with a light layer of orchid bark.

Here's a photo of the mini garden I made in March 2016. I planted it with maiden hair fern and a bromeliad flower which I love for their long lasting colorful flowers. Maybe next time I'll plant a orchid and a bromeliad....that would be pretty :)

Thanks all for reading my diary! Happy Spring!

 Aloha Friends!

Look what came in the mail today! My hubby's new lunch box! It's perfect for him. We do love Spam here. But, we try to be health conscious and buy the low sodium Spam. :)  With the exception of my favorite....teriyaki Spam.

The sides of the lunch box are covered in vintage ads. I love the "happy meat" and "how to create a Spam sandwich". Pretty silly stuff.

I can fill the lunch box with delicious recipes from my Spam cookbook!

It's December 1st and one of my plumeria has refused to accept winter and is still flowering! Everybody else has stopped blooming and some have started dropping their leaves.. They're all heading into dormancy. Which is more typical behavior for December. Not this flower!

.This plant is in a protected spot on my front porch and gets a lot of the low winter sun. It's starting to get chilly here in San Diego. I"m sure these are the last of it's buds for the season. It held onto summer as long as it could!

I can relate to this plumeria :)

Thanks for reading my diary, I hope you all had a blessed Thanksgiving!
Aloha!

We carved a pineapple this year as well as a few pumpkins. Lots of spooky fun going on here!

You'll enjoy carving a pineapple...they have so much personality with their crazy hair! I tried to make our pineapple appear joyful, with a big toothy grin.. They're easy to carve, Here's a few photos to give you some ideas on how to make your own...

Best wishes everyone for a safe and happy Halloween!
Aloha!

We have a lot of love for kalua pork at my house. I make it often. It's delicious, easy to make and you only need 3 ingredients! I've included instructions to barbeque or oven roast. Here's what you do...

Take a 2 pound or so pork shoulder roast (also called a pork butt roast) and cut deep slits into it. Sprinkle with Hawaiian sea salt. Rub the salt into the pork. Flip the roast over and do the same to the other side. Place the roast in a heavy duty aluminum baking pan (if you're oven roasting you can use a glass or metal baking pan). Drizzle liquid smoke over the roast, using 1 teaspoon per pound of pork. Cover pan tightly with aluminum foil., make sure it's sealed real good. My husband likes to barbeque, he places the roast to the side of medium coals. A 2 pound pork shoulder will take about two hours on the BBQ. If you want to oven roast, bake the pork at 350F for 3 hours. Once the pork is done, let it cool for a few minutes before lifting off the foil. Remove and save some of the liquid. The roast should easily shred with a fork. Taste the pork and decide if it needs some liquid added back in or additional liquid smoke.

Enjoy your kalua pork! Make a Hawaiian plate lunch with 2 scoops rice, 1 scoop mac salad and kalua pork. It's also great in tacos and on sandwiches. In the unlikely event you have left over kalua pork, it freezes very well.

Thanks for reading my diary!