My absolute favorite ice cream is Dave’s Green Tea in the cardboard like tub. Creamy, flavorful, and green with just the right taste of tea. I still remember a dessert from the Wisteria Restaurant – that iconic wonderful Japanese American restaurant with the best nishime, chicken with eggplant and almost everything else they served. The dessert I loved there was a scoop of green tea ice cream topped with lime shaved ice. Super delish!!! However, it is so sad that they packed it all up and closed several years ago.
But I digress. The reason I wrote this post was to share Aunty’s tip on serving ice cream from the freezer. I used to have the kids be in charge of scooping out the ice cream from the containers because it would be so cold – rock hard and very difficult to scoop out – even with the best scoops and dipping it in hot water, etc. They struggled and struggled, and succeeded because their desire to eat ice cream surpassed the effort and muscle they had to put in.
One day, without any kids to help, I wanted to have just a bit of wonderful green tea ice cream. I stuck our best scooper in the tub and couldn’t even make a dent because it was rock hard cold. Hmmm. I could wait but then I might forget it and it the whole thing would melt. I could put it in the refrigerator and return in about an hour but I wanted it right then and there.
So, I stuck the container in the microwave and heated it for 10 seconds. And by golly, the ice cream soften up enough to easily scoop it into my bowl and was perfect!
Why 10 seconds? I dunno. Maybe 8 will work, maybe 12 will work. In any case, because of that I am eating more than I should. However, somehow, life is even more wonderful when eating something as delicious and refreshing as a scoop of ice cream. That must count for something, right?
Black Garlic is the latest addition to my daily arsenal. Yasumi Gojo of Healing Seitai gave me a few heads of black garlic and asked me to try them. Her husband made them in an old rice cooker and she was sharing it with her clients. Some of them reported better blood pressure and better health. Pal Ryuko who is in the beginning stages of Parkinson’s says it makes her feel stronger. I think that it is making my grey hair black again!
I began to eat one clove a day in the morning and increased to 3 cloves a day. I do like the taste of garlic and the only difficult part of it is peeling the paper off – but it is easy enough to do.
Yasumi taught me how to make this great health supplement with a rice cooker, and I now make my own black garlic with a lot of extra to share.
The recipe
Peel off most of the paper from each head of garlic (actually, this step is not necessary). I use the Christopher Ranch bag of raw garlic from Costco because it is grown in California. I can fit about 18 heads of garlic in the 5 cup rice cooker.
Lay down a layer of wooden chopsticks or popsicle sticks on the bottom of the rice pot so the garlic is not resting on metal. Cover the sticks with a paper towel, then pile in the garlic heads. Try to keep the garlic away from the side of the pot so it doesn’t burn. Cover the pile of garlic with another paper towel.
Close the lid, plug in the rice cooker, and set it on “warm”. Leave the rice cooker on warm for 10 days. The smell is quite strong during the first few days so I keep it in the garage. Unplug the cooker and remove the bulbs when cool enough to handle.
Line the bottom with wooden sticks
Cover with a paper towel
Add the cloves of garlic – try not to let it touch metal..
Cover with another paper towel.
Cook on the warm setting for 10 days
Ta Dah! Black garlic!
And that’s it! I store the blackened bulbs in a bowl on my kitchen counter and peel and eat 3 cloves every morning. When my supply starts to get small, I start a new batch in the rice cooker. Actually, I am constantly making batches of black garlic because I like to share with others who are interested and may have some issues that it could help, just as Yasumi Gojo shared with me.
Costco also sells black garlic. I like the bottle it comes in, and each bulb has only one round clove in it! However, it is rather pricey and it is also from China. Pal Wandaful said she looked up “black garlic from China” and didn’t like how sketchy their practices are with bleach and questionable fertilizers.
I think that I am having more benefits from taking black garlic than my hair getting darker, but I can’t say for sure. It is a natural remedy that has and entourage effect. I just learned about that while researching the benefits of CBD and cannabis. It is the effect on one’s body that doesn’t just treat one thing. It treats everything.
And for that, I am more than willing to have garlic breath in the morning until I brush my teeth. And since we still wear face masks, nobody really notices anyway.
It is hard not to notice, but Honolulu Aunty now has ads on her website. Sorry if it offends my readers – I will make them less obtrusive in the next few days.
I used to have Google Adsense installed in my old website format and then I disconnected from it when I had error problems. That didn’t correct my error problems (still working on the comment error that pops up) with this new WordPress theme that I recently installed. Websites are like gardens – needing constant weeding and transplanting.
The way Adsense works is that I get fractions of pennies when people visit, and if anyone clicks on an ad, I get pennies. Then, after I get 7000 pennies, Google sends me a check for $70. Woohoo! Granted, it takes me about 2 years to make enough pennies to get paid.
Last I checked, I had $69.12 accrued in the account – not enough to get paid, but it was just sitting there after 3 years. So, I had to ask my techie son how to get back in the game of getting pennies again, for it is quite a thrill to get paid without doing much. My monthly social security checks are like that. And I do love and appreciate them.
Mahalo for putting up with Aunty. One of these days I will really retire and not check on my Ameritrade account, the price of bitcoin, or do real estate research. One of these days, but not soon.
Recently I put an ad on Craigslist in order to give away a used air conditioner. I post on Craigslist from time to time about elastic for sale in my “Locker” at Ben Franklin. This time, I put my phone number in the ad.
Right away, I had 2 people interested in the free air conditioner via text. I texted back to the first one with an (808) prefix and that person very politely asked if they can verify that I wasn’t a scam by sending back a 6 digit code that they would text to me. So clueless me, I said okay, and sent back their 6 digit code via text. Then the person asked if I had another phone that they could also use to make sure I wasn’t a scam.
This is when the red flags went up and so I google searched – craigslist verification code scam – and got it verified. This was a potential scam and by receiving and sending back the 6 digit code, the scumbags could use it on Google Voice and get another phone number. Sort of on my account – but not really. It could be harmless but nowadays, anything can be detrimental to the one who was fooled.
I texted back to the scambag that I wouldn’t deal with them and will be transacting with the 2nd responder to my ad.
And then, dang! The 2nd responder texted me “ok, I got your post. For my safety, can I send 6 digits number to make sure you are real?” I texted, “No.” And then got a “?” mark as a response. I said to email me and they wrote, “After verify I must call you… So can I send the verification code?”
Persistant buggah. And I left the message room. I edited my Craigslist ad so it didn’t show my phone number and the default Craigslist email was in place.
A lesson learned about posting my phone number for scammers to scam. And I still have the air conditioner in my car with no takers. If anybody wants a Mitsubishi PK30EK condensing unit (the inside part of a split unit) that is old but still in good condition, let me know! It is a dinosaur that needs the compressor part so chances are slim to none that anyone would want it. But, you never know…..
New blogging pal Jan of DJan-ity had a recent post about phatics. A phatic is “small talk” such as “How are you?” even though you don’t really want to know but ask it as a way to start a conversation. Indeed, if someone were to ask me how I was, they wouldn’t really be interested in a detailed answer. BUT, because this is my blog, I want to answer that question and readers can read, or not, and I wouldn’t be the wiser (unless you leave a comment).
Prior to Covid, I felt stressed by being too busy, I was feeling feeble, sluggish, unhealthy, unable to concentrate and getting terribly forgetful.
And then there was Covid
At first, the Covid shut down in Hawaii seemed daunting and terribly boring. There was nowhere to go and nothing to do. For the first time in years decades, my calendar was blank because everything was cancelled. Thankfully we had enough toilet paper and hand sanitizer because of my daughter’s easy recipe. I started making masks and used up all my elastic, then ordered more from Amazon which took months to arrive. On the few ventures out to get food or supplies, the traffic was so light and parking so plentiful, it was a joy to be on the road again. Honolulu almost felt like a ghost town.
Exercise
TaiChi classes were no longer held, but by chance I found DJan-ity’s (yep, the same one with the phatic word) post about flowers on her porch, in which she mentioned Five Tibetan Rites that she does on a daily basis. Very intrigued, I began to twirl, hook, arch, table, and dog (my descriptions). There was something about those exercises that seemed like the answer and so I struggled through them until they are now a very easy and fast start to every morning. I don’t do the recommended 21, which would be torturous and long, imo. I have settled into a wimpy 3 that works for me. My arm strength is so much better and I can do sit ups and push ups because of these exercises.
Brain Food
I was really getting worried about brain fog and began taking a supplement from Green Valley Natural Solutions called Brain Vitality Plus. It has ingredients that are different from products I have taken before and by golly I now can perform bookkeeping tasks that were getting difficult and I don’t have brain fog anymore. I am still forgetful by nature but have much better short term memory recall now, such as when I would walk into a room and forget why I walked there.
Hair Growth
At the beginning of 2020 I began to occasionally enjoy some CBD sleep gummies from Charlotte’s Web because they tasted so good. I noticed that new baby hairs on my receding hairline were growing so began having 1 before bedtime every night. Now my hairline looks full like it used to. Then, about 2 months ago, at the urging of Yasumi Gojo of Healing Seitai, I started eating cloves of black garlic that her husband makes in an old rice cooker. Prior to, my salt and pepper hair was getting whiter and all those new baby hairs were growing in white, but now my hairs are turning black! I am now in the process of making my own black garlic and will share the method with you in a future post. Sidenote: Do NOT buy the bottled black garlic from Costco. It is made in China. Pal Wandaful did some research on it and warned me about it.
Jan 2021 more baby fuzz!
April 2021 more hair, and darker!
Strength
In the summer, I began to weed and weed and weed our yard. It was overgrown with undesirable plants, as well as being unlevel and wild. At the same time, I started taking BioAstin from Costco made with Hawaiian Astaxanthin. It acts as a natural sunscreen but I began taking it because it was made in Hawaii and supposedly good for a lot of things. Here is a health article about it. What I noticed right away was that I could continue to work in the yard everyday without a break. Before, after a hard day of weeding, using a pick and moving rocks, I would be in such pain the next day that it took me days to recover. Not anymore! I feel like Superwoman now. And I am still weeding and weeding and weeding.
Looks daunting but is an enjoyable challenge for weeder loving Aunty!
Fasting
I read and re-read Dr. Stephen Gundry’s “Plant Paradox” book. It might have been where I first heard about Hawaiian Astaxanthin. I also learned about the benefits of intermittent fasting. I now fast every Monday. After Sunday dinner and my night snack, I don’t eat anything solid until Monday dinner. I have coffee in the morning along with yogurt and almonds (nuts are okay during fasting) and only water or tea during the day. I do get hungry but tell myself that I just have to wait for dinner. It is rather easy to do a one day fast and I am now at my ideal weight and feel healthier. I will do a post about Dr. Gundry’s book. It is a game changer and a life saver.
Looks
My hair is so long now because I haven’t gone to Mai’s Beauty Salon for over a year. I just pull it back into a ponytail. I know I look older, but I don’t mind anymore. I don’t dress up anymore. I don’t wear fancy earrings either because it gets in the way of my masks. If I go out in boro clothes, I feel fine because I am hidden behind my hat and mask. It is rather fun to be incognito. One of the advantages of wearing a mask out everywhere I go is that I don’t have to worry about sun damage to my face. I sometimes wear a mask when I am weeding for that reason. I look like a plantation worker with big hat, mask, long sleeve shirt, gloves,long pants and boots. And I love it!
Time
I also love having the luxury of days of not having to do anything. Sometimes I totally waste the day, sometimes I work so hard and accomplish so much I have to pat myself on the back. Covid has been the biggest disruptor to the most lives in the most unpredictable way. It is as if a whole year has disappeared, and time has been reset. I like being older and feel that the changes that I have made in the “missing” year are really great for me.
How am I?
So if you were to ask me how I am, I would say, “Good, thank you” but I would really mean “I have more hair, I have more time, I am stronger, my garden is looking better and better, and I am not worried about Alzheimers anymore!” And then I would ask you, “How are you?” (comments are most welcome!)
Years ago, Aunty paid ChicagoSlim on fiverr.com $5 to review her website.
It was brutal. HonoluluAunty scored an “F” for layout, too much going on, difficulty in navigating, yadayadayada-ness, and more. It was good to know and have an unbiased expert review, and after that report card grade, I had to spiff it up.
So, Chad Lamotte of GoodfellaMarketing.com totally revamped my website and for a few years, it worked great. However, WordPress changed a bit and the website started having problems. Chad wasn’t able to help. I was too much of a non techie to know what to do, paid a local company a lot to fix it but ran into problems with graphics and that went kaput.
Meanwhile, I just let it slide until I happened to see the Fishcake.us website because I took a few ceramic classes there. I discovered Janis Lee, their manager, who designed their chic modern look and flyers. She was willing to redo Aunty’s website and sent me over to Wix.com for ideas and themes. Turns out they are a great company BUT there are sign up fees and subscription fees. Not for me who likes free and comfortable, i.e. WordPress.
Janis had no experience with WordPress, but took a look, touched a new theme called Twenty Eleven, and shazam! HonoluluAunty had a new clean look, for free, and still comfortable for me to post, navigate, and be “Aunty”. Much mahalo to Janis!!!
Better than lipstick on a pig, happier than Christopher Columbus in a speedboat…
All of my friends and family know that I am a mess. Messy house, cluttered rooms, too much going on all the time.
However, after many many listens to Mari Kondo’s Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up, I started doing a bit of cleaning at a time. My kitchen countertops got cleared off (oops they need another go round), my bedroom got cleared out and my wardrobe has been halved. Little victories and areas of clean inspire more work and focus with new spots to tackle.
Our old bathroom was transformed with classic travertine walls and floor. I found a gorgeous old vanity with marble top and grand wall mirror for it. All was beautiful except for the old tub, which was grungy and dirty. The travertine tile mason (Jason Carroll of Hawaii Kai Custom Stone) recommended that I use a product called Diamond Magic to make the 90 year old tub look like new.
Elbow grease and a power tool help
I was pleasantly surprised to discover that Diamond Magic is made here in Hawaii! I bought the product and white scrubbing pad, watched the videos, and then headed out to Re-Use Hawaii to see Ben at the Honolulu Tool Library to borrow a sanding machine that had a velcro attaching disc.
It took a couple of hours of vibrating and sweat. A lot of clean rags that soon became dirty. I used Diamond Magic with the sanding machine and also by hand on inside curves. I also used a pumice stick to remove the stubborn calcium buildup by the drain. I took a break halfway through.
The finish line
Before I knew it, I was done! The tub looks good and my old bathroom sparkles! I don’t have to draw the shower curtain to hide it anymore – though I still might because I use it as a storage space for my overflow of fabric and projects.
Kudos
I love using Diamond Magic and plan to use it on my soap scum challenged glass blocks in my shower as well as on my windows with hard water spots.
Ben over at the Honolulu Tool Library is so helpful with supplying me with the right tool that a senior old lady like me can handle. They are open on Tuesday mornings, Friday afternoons, and on Saturdays. I pay the senior discount rate of just $35 per year and can borrow whatever tool I need for free for a week!
In the past I have borrowed a Gorilla Cart to haul buckets of dirt and rocks, a mini jack hammer to dig out a lemon tree (that didn’t survive), a sawzall to cut away trunks and roots, a staple gun to repair an upholstered chair, and a Dremel sanding kit for polishing up this tub.
I have saved so much time and money there and will continue to do so until I can’t lift and carry a sack of sand. I returned the wonderful Dremel kit on Saturday and borrowed an angle grinder with a diamond wheel so I could cut out a portion of a cement wall. I am also using it to cut off some points on a concrete grass block. It is so very empowering to do it yourself.
Aunty feels macho. And that’s a good thing. Tawanda!
My sister-in-law, Jo Ann Fukao, passed away in October after losing the battle with cancer – that had returned after 3 remissions.
I remember when my brother met her on a blind date. Like Apollonia and Michael Corleone in the Godfather, it was colpo di fulmine for them – when love strikes someone like lightening, so powerful and intense it can’t be denied. Not only was she extremely beautiful on the outside, she was even more beautiful on the inside.
Our kids called her Aunty Hugalani because she had the best hugs, every single time.
When she blew her nose (quite often), she honked so loud that babies would get startled and everyone would turn to look to find the source. And then she would laugh. Delightful peals of laughter that made everyone also laugh.
Because of Covid-19 restrictions, a Celebration of Life video has been put together with guidance from her former church pastor. Even if you don’t go to church or believe in God, if you knew her, she has risen from being an angel on earth to being an angel in the heavens. She lived and breathed joy, peace, and love every day of her life.
One of Aunty’s favorite writers is Mark Ford aka Michael Masterson. He used to write financial advice and the mindset for wealth but recently he came out of retirement and writes about common everyday pleasantries and finds.
I do like his movie recommendations – Octopus Teacher, Fargo, Planes, Trains and Automobiles, Home for the Holidays and others – as well as his wit and observations.
His latest was about sumo – which he calls “full grown men having a shoving contest in diapers.” He highlighted a Czech born wrestler named Takanoyama Shuntaro – in error since Takanoyama had retired in 2014. However, despite his mistake, the tournament he referred to was in May 2019 with Tochinoshin Tsuyoshi – a Mtskheta, Georgia born sumo wrestler.
It is a fascinating sport. Hawaii has also had many sumo wrestlers, among the best were Takamiyama (Jesse Kulaulua from Maui), Konishiki (Saleva’a Fuauli Atisano’e born in Samoa), and Akebono (Chad Rowan from Waimanalo).
Here is Tochinoshin’s highlight video from last year. The surprise comes at the end:
Aunty speaks very poor Japanese and makes up stuff. So, taihen potter, in my lingo is “REALLY great potter”. This film was made in 1970 and the artist died in 1978. He created his compound after living abroad for 3 years and did ceramics from scratch to kiln. He produced thousands of pieces, each one with his hand in it.
All of my friends and family know that I am a mess. Messy house, cluttered rooms, too much going on all the time.
Kudos