My Summer Vacation: Made in Hawai'i

I went to the 23rd Annual Made in Hawai'i Festival today; where at least 51% of the goods carried by a vendor must either be grown, sourced, or manufactured in Hawai'i. There are supposed to be over 400 vendors; I am looking for new ideas for omiyage. I tried to go on Friday, which was the first day, but although I was there just after it opened all the parking at the Blaisdell Exhibition Hall & Center was full. I thought that would be the best day to go since it was a working day but I was wrong. I decided not to go on Saturday since I wanted to keep an eye on Xander. So today was it; I left the house about 9:15 and got parked about 9:30 for the 10 am opening. There were a lot of people there at 9:30; I guess after 23 years they all knew to come early.

I went to the Arena first, most of the food seemed to be in there. The first booth I came across was Chic Naturals. They make snacks from garbanzo beans or chick peas; I saw them on the Living 808 Show. Right now they import the garbanzos from Washington but do all the processing in Hawai'i; they are working with farmers and next year will have a good part of their garbanzos grown in Hawai'i! This will be a good omiyage since they don't crumble like chips or cookies. And they're healthier.

The Kona Chips booth was the first one I came across that had crispy beef jerky; they use beef grown on the Big Island in the Kamuela area. It is beef that has been sliced extra thin and dried; its sort of like a beef chip. I don't think it will travel well but I got one to send to Kai to see how it does in the mail. I was not impressed by the flavor of any of the crispy beef products that I tried but we'll see what Kai says about it.

I picked up some calzones from Aloha Bakehouse. At least I think they are calzones, even if they are square. I'm going to cut them in to smaller squares and freeze them; I'll be able to take them out when Dad feels like eating. The dementia has made him confused about what time of day it is, so he doesn't feel like eating if he thinks its a different time. He also doesn't want to bother me, so if I have things that can be quickly heated up he is more likely to eat.

Clockwise from top left: Spinach & Cheese, Pepperoni & Olive, Meatlovers Special, and Sun-dried Tomato.

At the Natural Aloha booth I found a really nice body lotion made with olena (turmeric) and lip balms. The gray card below describes the products that Natural Aloha produces.

The lip balms contain (from top) turmeric, cocoa, coconut, and rose.

I also picked up sunscreen that's safe for infants, children, & coral reefs. The Little Hands Hawai'i products use natural and organic products. The sunscreens come in tinted and untinted; its tinted with iron oxide.

The Hawaii's Best folks were there, too. Although I know I can get a lot of their products at a number of grocery stores, they had 2 products at the festival that are not available in stores and they had kulolo mix which is not easy to find.

The Strawberry Custard and the Chocolate Butter Cake are not in grocery stores.

I stopped by the Manoa Chocolate booth, of course. They grow the cacao on the Big Island and process the chocolate in Kailua, where they have factory tours.

Wildlife artist Richard Mortemore of Laupahoehoe Graphics was there painting on site. He is from the Big Island and has some beautiful works. I bought his 2018 calendar series which is really cool. Except for the kalij pheasant which is an introduced species that is causing a lot of problems. (It's the one below the hawk and to the left.)

I also picked up a package of Maffles Mochi Pancake Mix.

Unfortunately they don't allow photos in the festival unless you have permission from the festival operators so I was unable to get photos of the guy making poi ulu at the 'Ai Manuahi Farms booth. Besides poi ulu, they also had pa'i'ai, poi, and kulolo.


Kulolo.

Primo Popcorn was also there. I got to meet Patrick, he used to work at the US Post Office with Lori. Patrick remembered mailing the package to Kai, sort of. He actually remembered mailing the box to Arlington, but not Kai's name. I told him that Kai didn't think the What?! Too Hot for You?! flavor was very hot; he suggested Kai try Da Reaper flavor. Since Kai liked the Muddy Piggy flavor, which is chocolate and bacon, Patrick suggested Kai try the Wicked Cacao flavor that has chocolate and chilis.

There was also an area with plants. It included a good selection of native Hawaiian plants. There were a bunch of plants I would have liked to get for the Kohala house. In fact, I saw a bunch of other things that would look nice in the Kohala house. But for now all I picked up was business cards.

These are cards from some vendors whose products I liked.

These are cards for food products. The Aikane Plantation one is for the $30 purple bag of Ka'u coffee that Kai had seen.

One of the other vendors I liked was Stoneface Hawai'i. They only had one business card left so they were having people take photos with their phones. (They had not seen the sign that said, "No photos.") It was a good way to memorialize their product along with the business card! I wish I could have done that for the rest of the things I liked!

It was the mugs that 1st caught my eye, but the coasters are cool too.

On the way home I passed by Thomas Square; they are renovating the park. The barriers around the park are decorated with American Sign Language symbols, the artist says there is a message in the symbols.

While I was at the Made in Hawai'i Festival I bought lunch. The servers were from the Ford Island Mess at Pearl Harbor. I asked them to wrap up the chili and teriyaki chicken plate so that I could take it home without things spilling. They did a great job even with the fiberboard containers.