REGULAR FOOD IN PURGATORY

After today, there are four days left in 2018.  I will feature:

• The most amazing story of the year.
• The New Bible.
• Grumble all you want, but we are today living better than ever before.
• Fabulous foods to end the year.

Today, I'll clear my desktop by featuring just regular food in Purgatory.  That announcement to the right of the 15 Craigside Christmas Dinner I place in the ho-hum category because it was lacking in anything particularly memorable, save for the company and wine.

Hopefully our Happy New Year Eve Dinner will be better.  What is regular food?  Most of us consume three meals a day.  I pay for 90 meals/month at 15 Craigside, but have maybe 25/month in the dining room.  A seeming waste of money, especially as the food here is actually okay:

Anyway, to end the year I'm clearing my desktop of these food photos.  However, I'll start with some Christmas trees, beginning with one from the 12th floor of 15 Craigside.  Every floor has its own, and you can double that number when you include the entire building.

The second shot was taken at Honolulu City Hall, while the one just above is in the 15 Craigside lobby, with the Royal Hawaiian Band providing entertainment.

Liliha Bakery:  fried rice with eggs and Vienna Sausage.  That buttered bread is their specialty.  In case you were wondering, Vienna sausages do not come from Vienna.  With European origins, they became synonymous with short and canned pork sausages, reaching a consumption peak half a century ago in the USA.  However, in Hawaii, they are still widely consumed.  Add Spam to our diet.

Mitsuken garlic chicken at Fishing Village, above left.

Italian wedding soup and Caesar salad lunch at Buca di Beppo.

Udon, miso soup and ikura over rice at Aki's.

Shanghai dumplings or Xiaolongbao from Taipan in the Chinese Cultural Plalza.  While associated with Shanghai and Wuxi, Dai Tai Fung, a chain from Taiwan, has made this dish popular in the USA.  This restaurant is also prominent in Shanghai.

Below some healthy looking koi next to my seat in Taipan.  They were decorative and not being shown for you to pick out for your lunch. 

A spaghetti and meatballs dinner on my lanai at sunset.  The ingredients were taken out from the 15C dining room.  I enhanced it by first frying in olive oil five cloves of sliced garlic, adding the broccoli and tomato from my take-out salad (which was topped with truffle oil and balsamic vinegar), then the Bolognese sauce.  I lightly heated the spaghetti in butter, and the meal was accompanied with a bottle of beer and my first tasting of the recently received Stanford Governor's Selection Cabernet from Dry Creek Valley.

The 12 floor of 15C has an annual Christmas Party, where I served as the Bingo announcer for impressive gifts.   My lunch plate to the left.  We also had blue champagne.

Here are my neighbors to the right.  We are in the 15C Solarium, where the poker gang plays, as we will through midnight on New Year's Eve.  We hope to soon feature fine dining here.

Tomorrow the full story of how the world came together to rescue the Wild Boars soccer team in Thailand.

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