Hawaiian Dinner Party

In order to thank my parents for their love and support, I had everyone over for a little Hawaiian dinner party. 

We started the night out with a mai tai bar.

While in Kaua’i, I tasted some rum from Koloa Rum Company, a local distillery that has been winning all kinds of accolades.  I wasn’t all that wowed by the rum, but I loved the mai tai mix from Hawaiian Kukui.  It’s made with Hawaiian cane sugar and fruit juices from right there on the island.  I’m not generally a fan of using mixes, but a quick Google search showed that mai tais contain several different types of juices and syrups.  The mix was much cheaper than all those juices would’ve been, plus I thought it would be more fun to be able to tell everyone they were drinking mai tais made with Hawaiian mix.  If you’d like to make your own from scratch, try this recipe from Trader Vic’s, widely determined to be the inventor of the mai tai.

Dinner was nothing fancy, but we all sure enjoyed it.  We sat down to a tasty meal of:

slow cooker kalua pork

mango bbq sauce 

Hawaiian sweet rolls

sweet potato fries

Some of the family made kalua pork sliders with the rolls and some ate the meat and bread separately.  But man, did we all eat!  I’ll be sharing the new recipes over the course of the week, so stay tuned.  You’ll want these, I promise!

one year ago: roasted asparagus and shrimp chowder

two years ago: Calabacitas, a healthy side dish for Mexican meals.

three years ago: lemon angel food cake