Today is my Aunt Leona's birthday. She's a year younger than my mom, making her 44 today. It's also the birthday of Ken aka Married Boyfriend. I only remember that because it's my aunt's birthday. It's not like I'm trying to remember or anything.

I've had a weekend gorge festival. It's been insane. Friday we (me, daa, Roy, Allyson, and Wayne) hit up the Crab Fest at Dixie Grill. Man, that was a lot of crab. On our table we had two trash cans o' crab. One for me and daa and one for R and A. Wayne had fried shrimp. He's not a big crab eater. He also ordered a "crabatizer" of crab stuffed artichoke with what seemed to be a spicy garlic herb aioli, not unsimilar to the one I made a few weeks ago. Anyway, his artichoke arrives and he looks at it and asks me what it is. I told him it was an artichoke. He asked how he was supposed to eat it. I showed him, you know, pull off a leaf and scrape the meat off with your teeth. I guess he's never had an artichoke before. I think he ordered it because he likes the spinach artichoke dip from CPK. He liked it though.

So our trash can o' crabs arrive and daa just rips into them. I'm still putting my big on and he's already got king crab on his face. These things were big, not the king crab legs which were actually smaller than the waiter explained, I mean the trash cans. There was one pound each of snow crab, dungoness, and king crab, along with two soft shell crabs, two corn on the cobs, a big bowl of cole slaw and one of beans. Of course we ignored the side items and just focused on the crab. If I could ever figure out how to get the pictures off my Clie, I could show you, but for now you'll just have to imagine.

I ate and ate and ate crab. It was magnificent. Daa, because he had rushed in like a mad man, began to slow down. You know how it goes, if you don't pace yourself you get full really fast as you shove food down your throat. Fortunately, I have a spare stomach reserved especially for crab. Allyson eventually quit on Roy, saying she had never eaten that much crab in her life, as she clutched her belly and writhed in her seat. Roy and I, we kept eating. Lots of eating. Yum. I showed Wayne the finer points of getting crab meat out of the shell. Not with a hammer, btw, but with the crab cracker, that little pick looking thing with the prong like slitted end.

After eating the crabs, Wayne and I shared what was supposedly key lime pie but was really like slightly lime if you're lucky custardy stuff.

But the eating wasn't done yet!!

Yesterday (Saturday) daa and I decided to check out the Taste of Honolulu. I've always wanted to go to this but this is the first year I actually did. It was awesome. I'm going to go every year now. Food everywhere. Good food. It was great because you can check out restaurants that you've never heard of or that you've been wanting to try but aren't sure if the food is good. First thing we did was head for the beer. I got a Kauai Gold, at least I think that's what the K word was. I know it wasn't Kona. Anyway, after receiving the beverage of life, we headed for the Musashi tent. Daa got some garlic chicken, I think. I decided to exercise my rights as an adult and got dessert first, a huge slab of peanut butter chocolate torte. It was so yummy and nice looking too. Also it went wonderfully with my brew. Alas, I could only finish half of it because I wanted to save room for other yummies. I wished for a piece of foil as I tossed the left overs into one of the many trash cans scattered about the lawn.

Over the next few hours, as the sun set and darkness set up the city, we ate many delicious things. Some not so delicious things were the artichoke crab dip from Gordon Biersch. It tasted like warm tuna salad, which isn't bad, unless you were expecting crab. Also I had some crab rangoons from Pipeline which were ok, but Ryan's are much better. These rangoons should have been called creamy crab wonton because that's what they were. They served them with a Chinese mustard sauce which only added to the wonton thing. I got to try that Pyramids place on Kapahulu. I've been wanting to try them for a while, especially since I keep hearing their commercials on the radio. I had some shawerma chicken or something like that. Anyway, it was marinated and broiled, served with pita and this yummy tangy yogurty sauce. It was super good. I snagged a menu to give to my parents since I kept telling them to take grandpa there because one of their commercials brags of their healthy cooking style. The prices are pretty reasonable as well and they feature belly dancers nightly. hehe

After a search for the bathroom, we found one, sparing me from a fate worse than death, that is, using the port-o-potties stationed outside the entrance. Nothing worse than a port-o-potty in the dark, except as daa pointed out, a port-o-potty in the desert, which I've also used.

Following the bathroom we checked out some jams and stuff, tried some lilikoi butter which was really yummy. Laughed at the overpriced thai watermelons. They wanted 6 scrip for one. The scrip were purchased for roughly 55 cents meaning they wanted over $3 per melon. You can buy them at farmer's markets for a dollar.

Anyway, we stood in line for poi mochi balls to bring back to mom and dad and then stopped by the anonymous dessert tent to pick up some cake to go. I got peanut butter pie and key lime creme brulee cheesecake or something like that. Didn't eat it yet, waiting for Wayne to return from work today.

I think I'm going to eat normal food today since I probably gained 5 pounds just from these last two days. Well of course I didn't I'm just saying that.

Lots to do today, non food related. Thought I'd hit up the pet store. It's so weird but I could have sworn I saw a PetsMart on the way out to Ewa Beach. I checked their website to get the exact location and find that there is no store in Hawaii. Odd. Wonder what I've been seeing then? Maybe I just imagined it. Spposedly that's been known to happen. I was looking for these claw caps for dogs. I can always find them online but all the places charge extra shipping to Hawaii which really irritates the crap out of me. Anyway, they're for mom's noisy ass dog. She said we could have Murphy in the house (long story) but we had to wait until she put Josie in the house so that Josie won't get lonely. Of course, this means never because mom never does anything she says she's going to do. She just keeps putting it off, saying she has this to do and that to do. So haha on her, I'm just going to do it myself. First though I need to get caps so that Josie's claws don't scratch the tile. Blah blah. Also I'm going to pick up some pee pads for her because she has some bladder control issues. Mom didn't want to use paper or pads because she thinks the dog will become dependent on them. However I read that some dogs need to have a permanent pee place in the house just because they need a place to go right now. Something like that.