Kau Kau Kitchen™
`Okakopa 2008by Leilehua Yuen
Celebrating Hawai`i Foods and Lifestyles for 25 Years
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Kau Kau Kitchen celebrates Silver Anniversary
In October of 1983, Kau Kau Kitchen™, a local-style cooking column of Hawai`i's food, lifestyle, and kitchen lore was published in the Hawai`i Tribune-Herald. Over the next quarter century, the little home-style column was picked up by other newspapers, magazines, and even became a radio show and a television special. Now in it's latest incarnation, Kau Kau Kitchen™ is on-line
Kau kau, pronounced "cow cow," means "food," or
"meal" in Hawaiian pidgin. It also means "to
eat," as in "let's go kau kau" - "let's go eat."
The Kau Kau
Kitchen™ cooking column and books have been popular in Hawai`i
since the first column (left) appeared in the Hawai`i Tribune Herald
in 1983.
At a
church supper in September, 1983, Sherm Fredrick, then-editor of the
Hawai`i Tribune-Herald, mentioned that he wanted to make the paper
more "local." Food being important to local people, he thought that
would be a good place to start. I suggested my mother, an international
food writer of some standing. Sherm said that he wanted someone from
Hawai`i. Joking, I told him that I would do it. I got the job.
My pay was $5 per weekly column, including photos. Far more important
than the pay was the experience, and the opportunity to attend a variety
of events, from paniolo-style Portuguese bean soup contests to exclusive
wine-tastings at our newest resorts. I was blessed with the opportunity
to meet wonderful authors and chefs from Hawai`i, the Mainland, and many
other countries.
In 1988 (at right is an old promo photo of me in 1988), the
Kau Kau Kitchen™
series of cookbooks began publication. Bess Press published Kau Kau
Kitchen's first year worth of recipes. Basically Books published The
Banana Book, and each year after that I self-published chapbooks
which were a combination of recipes, talk-story, and my poetry and art.
If anyone still has any of those chapbooks, I'd love to have copies made
of them for my own archives!
About the same time
Kau Kau Kitchen™
was picked up by the Maui Sun and a small magazine on the
Mainland. KHLO also carried a 30 second
Kau Kau Kitchen™
radio show. It's amazing how much you can say in 30 seconds!
I also was teaching cooking classes at Lyman House Museum, the East
Hawai`i Cultural Center, and for the University of Hawai`i Home
Extension Program, and when a Japanese TV station wanted to do a show on
papayas, the Extension Service recommended me as an advisor. WOW! Those
were really big cameras! We shot the episode at a beautiful ranch in Ahualoa. I was to teach the models how to cook local-style foods using
papayas. Well, the models just couldn't figure out how to cook in an
open-air kitchen, so I ended up being the advisor, and the actress as
well! After receiving the pay for that job, I was hooked on TV work -
$600 was some serious money!
Being recently divorced, and with a child to support, I
was scrambling for dollars, and so Yuen Media Services was born. YMS
marketed
Kau Kau Kitchen™
to Japanese media, California, and Las Vegas, in addition to the state
of Hawai`i.
I began to self-publish the
Kau Kau Kitchen™
Newsletter, again, a monthly compendium of recipes, poetry, and local
lore. That was available by subscription. At that point, one of my
`ohana started calling me the world's smallest media conglomerate!
Today,
Kau Kau Kitchen™
is published on-line here at KauKauKitchen.com, and on Oceanic
Cablevision's website. We have gone to a more magazine-like format, and
plans are to put up a new issue each month.We have an on-line forum
where folks can talk-story about local food. Please come by and visit
often. pull up a stair, enjoy some lemonade from fresh local lemons, or
a beer, sit back, relax, and talk story.