Kau Kau Kitchen – Page 3 – Hānau ʻOkakopa 1983: Celebrating Hawai`i Foods and Lifestyles for 38 Years

by Leilehua Yuen

Hey, look! We’re on WordPress, now! Instead of writing my own CSS and trying to keep up with all the updates, upgrades, and etc. on the internet, I’m going to let WordPress and Bluehost do it, so I can focus on FOOD!

Also, there are so many awesome and creative chefs out there coming up with new dishes and techniques, Kau Kau Kitchen™ will focus on older “local kine” recipes, kitchen tips, and lore of earlier days–things that seem to be getting lost in this fast-paced world of ours.

Also, it costs money to run a web site, so to keep Kau Kau Kitchen™ free and open to the public, we’re carrying advertising now (but no worry, stay cool stuffs!)– things we actually buy, or would like to buy, for ourselves. An’, you know, sometimes we even going bus’ out da pidgin. Evah since we stay spock da kine Pidgin Switch on Andy Bumatai’s YouTube show, we stay flipping dat buggah on an off foa dayz! Good fun!

So, if you like one serious kine cooking website or blog, we going pos’ links to some righteous kine ones. But if you like all kine ol’ kine stuffs, try stay right hea and cruz wit us. K, den? Get da informurshul fo’ da Pidgin Switch below. Try look. Go. Check um! Go check um! Go! Check!

https://www.facebook.com/KauKauKitchen/

Celebrating Hawaiʻi Foods and Lifestyles since 1983

Kau kau (pronounced “cow cow”) means “food,” or “meal” in Hawaiian pidgin. It is also used to mean “to eat,” as in “let’s go kau kau” – “let’s go eat.”

The Kau Kau Kitchen cooking column started in 1983 in the Hawaiʻi Tribune Herald. Then-editor Sherm Frederick was looking for a new cooking column. I suggested my mother. Sherm was excited, and said he’d love to have a local person write the column. I eplained that my mother actually lives in California. Ok, that would not do. So I asked if he minded if I wrote the column, myself. He invited me to submit some columns, and thus my writing career began.

The first column was on the Kona Coffee Festival. I’ve still got a copy of it somewhere. As soon as I find it, I’ll post it.

After writing it for a year or so, I self-syndicated and it began appearing in the Maui Sun newspaper, a small magazine in Las Vegas, and a few other publications catering to HawaiÊ»i expats. It also grew into a radio show on KHLO, and a short-lived TV show on Hilo’s old Channel 2. Diamond Papaya did a Kau Kau Kitchen special on Papayas, and the brand was featured in some local cooking events created to promote local agriculture and food products. Some cookbooks and kitchen products also spun off the original column.

I was fortunate to be invited to lots of great foodie events I never would have otherwise seen, and I got to meet many wonderful folks in the industry. But juggling all of that was a lot of work. I ended up putting Kau Kau Kitchen on “autopilot” for a few years and returned to school, seeking a degree in journalism.

After a number of career twists and turns, with Kau Kau Kitchen cruising along, primarily existing as books and occasional event or media appearances, the Internet was born. Kau Kau Kitchen went on-line.

I’d already been producing Kaʻahele Hawaiʻi (by now the world’s oldest Hawaiian culture and arts website), for a few years. Konabob Stoffer of KonaWeb had helped me to set it up. So putting Kau Kau Kitchen online seemed quite doable. It was much more cost effective than paper publishing, and I could reach far more people.

Now, after 40 years of covering Hawaiʻi’s mixed-plate food and culture, I am looking forward to what the future will bring!

A hui hou!
~Leilehua