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I'm one for scrubbing the stove top--so satisfying to pry off the cooked-on bits.

LOVE The Shed. Their Shed Pollo Adobo is to die for. It haunts my dreams.

I grew up in Hawaii and LOVE going home (Honolulu) and then taking side trips to other islands. Favorites on the Big Island:

Kona side
- Cafe Pesto, Kawaihae - I've been going here since I was 5. It's really popular, so try to make a reservation for dinner otherwise you will have a dull wait in a strip mall full of mostly tacky art and dive shops. I sat at the bar last time and split a flight of local beers with my bf. Keoki brown ale from Kauai is seriously delicious. This is one of the only places anywhere that carries it.
- Kealakekua town (upland from the beach 15 minutes or so?) has a few good country style cafes if you need a tasty lunch on your way up/down the coast. There's one that's connected to an old theater that I like, but I can't remember the name of it.
- the Lu'au at Kona Village. Make reservations. As someone who grew up in Hawaii and who is part Native Hawaiian, I have an especially low tolerance for hokey lu'aus. The dance performance here is absolutely not the star of the show--ignore the strange collapsing of all Polynesian cultures into one. Instead, pile your plate as high as you can with everything at the buffet. This has a very good selection of actual Hawaiian food as well as Hawaiian-Japanese, Hawaiian cowboy, and Pacific Fusion. I hope you like raw fish because their poke (pronounced pokay...raw fish salad? way tastier than that sounds) is some of the best.

For higher end food, either Merriman's or the restaurants at Mauna Lani Bay Resort.

Waimea: neither Kona, nor Hilo
I love Waimea. It's an incredibly beautiful valley and has the slow town feel that I miss so badly in Manhattan.
Hawaiian Style Cafe there has gargantuan platters of local takes on country food. This is truly the stuff of thisiswhyyourefat.com The bf got an epic oversized take on the famed Loco Moco which included a massive platform of fried rice (rice, egg, portuguese sausage, spam, peas, soy sauce), then a hamburger patty, slab of more spam, sausage, sauteed onions, a fried egg and covered in a cup of brown gravy. Delicious. PS, yes we eat spam, and it is tasty.

other parts
If you go to Puna (southwestish side, inland) there is a huge hippie community making delicious smoothies and fruit treats with the abundant local produce. The whole town smells like incense and pot. Just a heads up.

Ka'u Oranges (from Ka'u, near Puna and Na'alehu) are very ugly but very tasty. They are so sweet and juicy. Oh man, I could really go for 5 of those right now. Little markets and grocery stores will probably carry them.

I'm going to stop now before I get myself too homesick to function. Have a great trip!

@simon, I'm sure your farmer is growing other things, but the weather has been a little less than summery, postponing or ruining traditional summer crops.

I get weekly emails from my CSA farmer and he has been lamenting the incredibly cold wet weather in the Northeast which as he puts it, completes the Late Blight disease triangle of host, pathogen and environment. For organic farmers, the only options are to postpone the inevitable death of the plant by spraying mildly human-toxic copper spray (which gets washed off with the heavy rains, of course) or to rip out the tomato plants.

In other CSA news, I'm drowning in cucumbers since they just swell up with all the water.

After having made Monica Bhide's Chile Pea Puffs (recipe on 101cookbooks) I want to cook like that! Quick to make, cheap, and extremely flavorful in a new way, they were some of the most delicious things I have eaten in a long time and I am an eater of delicious things.

Some of these look really awesome, and thanks to those with camera suggestions! I just use my bf's canon dSLR or my own little pentax, but have been trying to help my best friend get a replacement for her point and shoot.

I write about trying to eat well on a budget, balancing urban life and a love of the outdoors. If you need some backpacking recipes--lightweight, cheap, filling, nutritious meals that I would also happily eat in my apartment--or if you want a few more palatable ways to make your apt more eco-friendly check it out! urban ruralist

@DELICIOUS: I make butter regularly by pouring whatever leftover cream I have into a bowl at least 2.5 times the volume of the liquid cream and using my hand mixer on medium high. As a few people noted, you get butter from (over)whipping cream. You'll get to the point of whipped cream with nice fluffy peaks, whip it a little longer and soon you will see the smooth whipped cream becoming more granulated and a little yellow. Keep whipping until it starts to spatter (now is when you are glad to have used a large bowl). Uncultured buttermilk--which looks like watered down milk--will separate from the butter clumps.

At this point I get out my rubber spatula and squish the butter together to remove some of the excess liquid and pour that into a separate container. (note: excellent for use in biscuits and scones, but less tangy than cultured buttermilk) I bring the mixer back in to eke a little more liquid out and then smoosh the butter into a rough ball and store in a little glass jar in the fridge. I don't add salt at all, but that's a matter of taste.

@DaveFaris - Fresh made butter is free from chemicals and is much much sweeter than regular store-bought butter. It's basically extracting and refining the most delicious flavor and fat parts out of cream. If you have some warm, oven-fresh sourdough, there is not much better than a slab of sweet cream butter melting into it.

I found Heath "bits o brickle" toffee bits at Fairway (125) in the baking aisle two weeks ago, but they were trickily not on the shelf. Rather, they were hanging on one of those clip things that I usually ignore.

When I can't find toffee bits, I buy Hershey's SKOR bars and break those up. They're thinner than Werther's, so they're easier to smash. They're coated in chocolate, which is fine for me, but if your toffee wedges are chocolate free, fear not. Chuck the bars in the fridge and the chocolate will peel off in nice big flakes for snacking.

Kenjialtci put it well. Basically, the finer you chop or the more you smash the garlic or as jfljoe says, you “don't care about the structural integrity of the garlic,” the more garlicky juice you release. The result is that your garlic will be a lot more pungent if you use a garlic press, smoosh your garlic with a pan, or finely mince it.

@ feriorrenna – I definitely used to put play-doh through my parents’ garlic press. I thus grew up without one.

@mh330, dmarina – I kind of love smelling my garlicky hands after a chopping sesh. It prolongs my food experience. And that's always a good thing in my book.

I agree with Simon that kiddos on the UWS, especially near the museum, are inevitable. However, I did have a moderately unpleasant kid-related SS-MSP encounter a couple of weeks ago, so it's not just there. The woman behind me in line was playing catch with her approx. 2 year old son and a child-sized soccer ball. He was not so good at aiming (or caring) so I got bombarded. When the woman's husband came back from taking their daughter to the restroom, he suggested taking both kids to a less crowded area so that their son wouldn't bother the other people on line. (Appreciated!) The woman loudly and shrilly said no, he's staying with me and then proclaimed that "this is a park and if people have a problem with children playing with a ball they should go somewhere else." I'm fine with kids playing in a park, but lady, you're standing on line on the sidewalk for burgers and fries, you're not in a field where being hit by an errant ball would be expected.

whoa, I just realized that at least one table is not present in this catalogue.

Perchance did you miss the Duncan Hines table?? It was easy to do, and if you did, be glad. There's nothing like being next to P*ONG to starkly contrast a boxed carrot cake mix and plainly expose it for what it is. However, does this mean that you (gasp) failed in your mission: "No dessert was to be left untouched, uneaten, or undrunk?"

Echoing cybercita and Brooklyn Brownie, thank you Serious Eats! I had a wonderful time, and am especially happy that there were no Paula Deen acts of inappropriateness/hilarity. Unlike cybercita, I just made it a weekend of indulgence, went to City Bakery to meet David Lebovitz the next day and then hit Shake Shack an hour later... I'm a little disappointed that I missed the Modern's table (how?) since I love coconut, tapioca, and hazelnut with a fiery passion.
Zach - I too found myself loving the baconesque taste of the wd-50
Robyn - I LOVED Kyotofu's vanilla beetroot tofu. After a sea of similar flavor profiles, it was downright refreshing to have that earthy taste. Or maybe I just like beets.

Personally axe makes me think of two things: Growing Up Gotti, and this amazing piece on the Onion a while ago (technically tag body shot, but you know, same same) http://www.theonion.com/content/node/52985

As to ladies possibly wanting their man to smell like chocolate, I don't see why not. I'm a lady and a chocolate lover, and can safely say that my enjoyment of all things increases by a power of 10 when combined with chocolate. However, I must stipulate that any body spray have a tastefully done chocolate smell--seriously, if you could have valrhona cologne, that'd be my undoing--but I highly doubt that Axe would be able to achieve anything close.