Sunday, December 8, 2013

What's a kapakahi chef?

How this all started

Originally I started a website to document my favorite foods, recipes and stuff that was food related. The thought was that this was going to connect with my writing as an Examiner Cooking & Recipe writer but then it became bothersome more than a help and it duplicated things that just didn't seem to matter in the world of social media.



What's the difference in this blog?

This is an extension about all kinds of things I eat, cook, bake, saw/read, bought etc. So it came to me that I didn't have a focus, no biggy this is where one can free write and get the writing juices flowing. This blog was going to be about anything and everything food related, it wasn't on a particular type of food, recipes or machines etc - which is so against the web crawlers, but I was all over the place. 

What's Kapakahi Mean?

With that I remember the word or slang that we used back home in Hawaii - 'kapakahi'.
Here's the definition: kapakahi (kah pah kah hee). Definition: lop-sided; one-sided; crooked; messed up. Used In A Sentence: Stay all kapakahi already! In English?

UPDATE: in March 2014, I changed the blogger url to http://foodieforeverdotcom.blogspot.com/ as it was easier for people to relate to then the words kapakahi chef. 


Multi-Cultural foods = Melting Pot

I thought to myself, "yup, that's what my food is all about", not so much one-sided but mixed up instead of messed up and I don't mean that negatively. 

It's an assortment of goodies both savory and sweet that we all enjoy. I have a lot of influences from growing up in Hawaii, the background of the Filipino, Hawaiian and Chinese sides of the 'ohana and the awesome tastes of the large groups of Asian and Polynesian dishes in the islands. 

Now that I live in haole-land, I have a stronger desire to learn how to make the dishes that I could easily get at many grocery stores and malls back home. I've also been fortunate to travel to other countries and learn some of their favorite dishes and brought the desire for those tastes back with me.

In addition to the authentic dishes, many of the people groups that migrated to the Hawai'ian islands came up with local (Hawaii) dishes that tweaked their home country because of different ingredients and the melting pot experience. Thus - this blog may have been called The Melting Pot, but then again, someone probably already has that name too. 

All in all, kapakahi seems to fit well right now (but the site will remain as FoodieForever.com. I need to get recipes from my relatives, mainly my cousins, friends/family to share so this may work out best to get them online and have them post pictures and recipes of what they have done so that we can share no matter where we live and go from there. This is a collaboration of many kapakahi chefs. - mlehua

Check out my recipes at: Orlando Cooking Examiner