hawaii food & wine festival 2012

if you've been following my facebook, twitter or instagram, i was busy towards the end of august/beginning of september with the 2nd annual hawaii food & wine festival.  lucky for me, i was given the opportunity to help with the event this year.  :)

here are some of my favorite pictures from the week of the festival.  love love.

foraging & bounty of he'eia

couple days before the first day of the festival, we went out to paepae o he'eia where we harvested ākulikuli (costal succulent) and paula (young shoots of sweet potato) for the day time event on thursday.  this place is located in kaneohe, which is north east of where i live.

what a beautiful place, surrounded by the fish pond and mountains

with about 10 helpful hands, we were able to harvest all this all within an hour and a half!

although it wasn't planned, i had the opportunity to visit the taro lo'i at papahana kualoa which is an educational program that helps students, teachers and the community understand and appreciate the rich cultural and natural history of their hawaiian islands.

yup - look again, i'm in MUD. wtf is right!  i didn't even hesitate before diving into that mud! who am i???

part of our group in mud and with our taros picked!

after we were covered knee-high with mud, what's a better way to cleanse off than jumping into the river??

these are the taros that we picked and cleaned!

this is roy pounding poi at the thursday, day time event - bounty of he'eia.

enter the modern dragon - thursday night

this is at our first signature event on thursday night at the modern honolulu hotel.

the featured chefs for the night being silly~

(photog courtesy of my bombdigity friend, ed morita)

misc fun~

this IS roy's.

the three executive chefs of roy's in oahu, jason peel, chris garnier & darryl shinogi and corporate chef, jackie lau had a breakfast-lunch meeting at the whole ox deli

this was our refrigerated truck that was parked in front of roy's hawaii kai for a week, storing all products delivered that needed to be transported to various venues.

this was our refrigerated truck that was parked at the hilton hawaiian village before it was full!

AHHHHH!!!  yup, that's me hanging on robert irvine, from restaurant impossible.  he was one of the featured chefs at the hilton event on saturday.  he was one chef i was looking forward to meeting and totally star struck!!  i watch him on tv all the time~

after paaaaaarty - friday night

roy's team with our awesome culinary students~

this is bob - he's the owner at the whole ox deli.  bob is da bomb.

definitely one of my favs.

farm to table - saturday night

supporting the men of japan, toshi yoroizuka & nobu matsuhisa.  apparently, toshi is one of the best pastry chefs in japan right now!  cool!

the bf came with me - what a stud.

(honestly, he makes his shakas look so cool!)

how could we not take a picture with robert irvine??  robert was feeling pa'a's arms, comparing them to his!  i think my bf is bigger than robert, what do you think??

love this - alan seems quiet, but he's totally goofy.  to our right, that's michelle - she does his desserts.  she made my fav of the night and the best dessert~  it was pineapple shave ice with tapioca pudding on the bottom! LOVE!  (cool thing about alan, he was always walking around with one of those fancy camera and camera bag!)

cuisine of the stars - sunday night

roy's team!

oh yah - iron chef sakai and his sous chef katsuyama.  we're definitely bff's!

this was our hearts of palm churro with citrus sugar. to DIE for!

what a beautiful setting~

that sums up the festival in the shortest way possible.  honestly, one of the best experiences ever.  i got to work with some amazing people, i met some talented chefs and made new friends.  if you want to see more pictures from the festival, you can visit:  hawaii food & wine festival or my facebook!  

will you attend this fabulous event next year???