being a celiac on an island

I'm seriously kicking myself. I thought that since I can find gluten free items in stores such as Fry's and Safeway, I wouldn't have any problems out here on the island of Oahu.

First of all, there are no chain grocery stores. They take pride in that. The closet thing I could find was Longs Drugs that had lots of food I couldn't eat. The Wal-Mart that's within walking distance had a limited amount of food and sadly, no Redbridge.

I also walked to the asian market to see what they had. Most of it was mixed with soy sauce that I couldn't eat.

Yesterday was boyfriend's birthday. I was desperate to make a cake for him. I wanted it to be a cake that I could eat too, but I was resigning myself to admit that it might be a Betty Crocker birthday cake.

But in asking around, I got the names of a couple "natural foods" places that were a block apart. So I hopped on a bus to go over there. Not too surprised that it was by the university. The first place only had Bob's Red Mill gluten-free flour. I didn't want to have to buy the xanthum gum, and other things the cake recipe called for. So I checked the other store a block away.

It was a natural foods market and deli, so I wasn't holding out much hope. But as I walked in I saw Boomi Bars, I began to hope. I then found a Gluten-Free Panty yellow cake mix, and almost burst into tears and song. I also picked up an energy bar that was gluten-free. If it's any good, I'll probably buy a case.

So boyfriend got his birthday cake gluten-free.

I hate baking out here because it's so humid it permeates everything you try and make.

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As for restaurants. Forget about it. Even Outback that offers a gluten-free menu seems to be lost here. I had been doing good by eating a lot of sushi rolls and avoiding the soy sauce. But last night, I treated boyfriend to ShoreBird (I ran into some newlyweds that raved about it). It was a nice on the beach setting, but it's a "cook your own food" place. Boyfriend tried to clean the grill we were using, but it was either something on the grill, at the salad bar, or from the bar that got me.

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But seriously - what's up with the Spam? I'm not joking. Even McDonalds downstairs offers a Spam breakfast sandwich. You can get Spam in sushi rolls. And of course, Wal-Mart has a huge section of Spam in their limited grocery section. I haven't seen someone carrying around containers of Spam, but there must be enough of a demand to warrant McDonalds serving it. At least Spam uses potato starch, so I can eat it, but why?

land of flowers

I *heart* my macro settings on my new camera. It works so well on shots such as these:

Bird of paradise.

Yeah, we have hibscius plants in AZ. But I had never seen a white one before.

This was from a flowering tree in the park a block away. I thought it was pretty.

one fish, two fish

So I finally made it to Waikiki beach this morning. The man made beach was okay, but I wasn't finding a lot of inspiration. So I continued on to the protected reef area. I got some nice pictures of the waves crashing on the pier, and some okay shots of the reef below. Walking along the pier, there were all kinds of fish at that section of reef.

Photographing fish that are under the water while you're above with a constantly moving ocean in between is very difficult. Even with a short shutter setting. Most of the pictures look like abstract art or oil mixing with water. But here's some that I'm happy with how they turned out:

This guy was there a lot with two others. He'd jump out of the water when food was tossed in (I wasn't feeding them). I ended up taking most of my shots of this fish because he was so striking I thought it'd be easy to get a good keeper.

These were called torpedo fish by someone watching. I don't know what they really are. These guys were the easiest to photograph it turned out. There was a small school of them the entire time I was there.

This was the most difficult because he didn't hang around too much. He was black with small orange dots on his lower body.

This guy wasn't around much, but he sure was striking. I'm glad I was sorta able to catch him on the camera.