Just Good Food

By Abraham Freeman

September 16, 2024

We walked down the steps into our first ABC store. My wife and I pursued the isles until we came to the hot food section. This is what we had come for, the Spam Musubis. I pulled the door of the hot food case open and grabbed a spam musubi and a teriyaki chicken musubi. They fit perfectly in the palm of my hand separated by my middle finger. We paid the three or so dollars per musubi and retreated to our hotel room to devour our treats. 

A quick anatomy lesson on the spam musubi is as follows. It’s composed of three parts. Nori (seaweed), white rice, and a slice of spam. There are other varieties where the spam is cooked in teriyaki sauce or brown sugar.  The spam can be substituted for teriyaki chicken, fried chicken, a hot dog split in half, and I have even seen eel. In these cases of substitution, Spam is removed from the name and the substituted ingredient takes its name's place, for example, Hotdog Musubi.

Now in the comfort of our hotel room, we peeled back the plastic wrap halfway down the musubi. There was a bit of difficulty in pulling the plastic wrap back due to it having shrunk under the heat of the hot food case. I sunk my teeth in. It was soft, requiring minimal effort. The first bite is always amazing, the incredible saltiness, fats, and sugars from the spam mixed with the white rice perfectly. The nori tore away from itself leaving the rest of the musubi structurally intact to hold itself together for further bites. 

Spam Musubi Credit:Abraham Freeman

Spam musubis can be found at gas stations, grocery stores, and restaurants throughout all the populated Hawaiian islands. However, it was not always this way. The canned meat Spam was first sold in 1937. It’s interesting that even though Spam is tied to Hawaii’s modern history it was not created there. It was first produced in Minnesota (What). A place that is in some ways the complete opposite of Hawaii. Who concocted the first Spam Musubi is debated on. In some stories, Spam musubis were created out of necessity, and in others out of convenience, maybe there is some truth in both (Barbara), (Li). Currently, Spam is still relatively cheap, selling for around four US dollars per can. Growing up I ate it out of convenience, low cost, and it's delectable taste. When I would forget to pack lunch in college, I would walk across the street to the gas station and purchase one or two of them.

When you have something salty you need something sweet, right? Well, I think so. There is one sweet that comes to mind which are malasadas from Komoda’s Store and Bakery in Makawao, Maui.

Growing up on Maui and attending school up country everyone knew of Komoda’s Store and Bakery. It was never called the full name, it always was called Komoda’s Bakery. When I would have potlucks at band practice after school or it was someone's birthday, if a box of malasadas from Komoda’s showed up, it never lasted long.

Komoda’s Bakery is the fruition of the American dream. The couple who started the bakery were both immigrants. The husband Takezo Komoda came to Maui “with ten dollars” in 1907. It’s noted from the Makawao History Museum that neither Takezo nor his wife Suzie spoke English. I find it inspiring that people with wits and perseverance can create a business that has lasted over one hundred years (Museum). 

My wife had never had malasadas and I was excited to introduce them to her. As much as I have fond memories of Komoda’s malasadas, embarrassingly I have never set foot in the bakery myself. I passed the bakery ten times a week going and leaving school, though I never entered it. To my credit, the bakery hours are from seven to one. 

Knowing that if we didn’t get up to the bakery early, we would miss out so with this knowledge we headed up to the bakery around eight o'clock. The store was larger than I thought, once we entered through the double doors we were directed to the right. Here shelves of doughnuts and bread were arranged. All of them were fresh, of course. The first shelf contained bags of stick doughnuts. These are doughnuts that are about the size and shape of a tomato that are shish kebab onto a skewer. Please forgive me for comparing a doughnut to a tomato. There is no space left on the skewer though, which I appreciated. The doughnuts are the color of walnut wood and are glazed in sugar. I grabbed a bag. 

Komoda Bakeries Stick Doughnuts Credit:Abraham Freeman

Continuing on, we made our way to the front case, here we were greeted by a woman. I looked at the case, I knew I wanted malasadas, though now confronted with the multiple types of doughnuts, I couldn’t decide. My wife was willing to go with whatever I picked, in this instance, which made it all the more difficult.

I chose an original malasada, a guava-filled malasada, and a long john filled with vanilla creme. We thanked the woman, paid, and went to find a place to eat our goodies. 

Salty and sweet are delicious separately, though there is one food that I absolutely love that unifies these tastes better than any food I know. This is li hing mui. Li hing mui is a plum that has been pickled. Honestly, I would be hard-pressed to identify it in a pickled plum form (Wong). Commonly it is sold as a light red powder by itself or mixed onto candy or fruit. Growing up I would eat it mixed with gummy worms, sour belts, bananas, and mangos.

Thinking of the taste of li hing mui makes my mouth water. However, it is an acquired taste. When I introduced my wife to it when we first met, she was not keen on it. Through our years of dating, she has come to like it, dare I say love it. 

While on O’ahu we visited the Aloha Stadium Swap Meet. To be clear the swap meet is not in the stadium itself, but is in the parking lot that encircles it. While there we pursued the stands of clothing and tourist trinkets. As we browsed, I came across a vendor who was selling fruit. Curious, I approached for a closer look. A woman was sitting towards the middle right of the stall cutting fruit. She looked up briefly before going back to the task at hand. A bag of yellow and bright red caught my eye. As soon as I saw it, I knew what it was, li hing mui mango. I purchased it from the woman for ten dollars and strode away to find my wife to show her my latest find.

Once I found my wife I opened the sandwich-size ziplock bag and began munching on this tasty find. The mango was yellow though still not fully ripe. This left the best of both worlds. It gave the mango firmness when biting through it. The sweet sugars from the mango combined with the salty sugars, and hints of licorice from the li ing mui transported me back to being a kid (Wong). Within an hour we had completed the loop of vendors around the stadium. The ziplock bag was now empty, except for a tablespoon of red juice. I lined up the corner of the opening of the bag to my mouth and tipped it back which gave me a concentrated hit of li hing mui. I licked my fingers clean though they would be stained red for the next day.

Li Hing Mui Mangos Credit:Abraham Freeman

One of the reasons that my wife and I love to travel is to experience new foods. For this blog post, I chose the foods that have memories that are tied to my years of growing up and attending college on Maui.

References

“Barbara Funamura, Creator of Spam Musubi, Dies at 78.” Nichi Bei News, Nichi Bei News, 27 June 2016, www.nichibei.org/2016/06/barbara-funamura-creator-of-spam-musubi-dies-at-78/. 

Li, Ang, et al. “The WWII Origins of Spam in Asian American Cuisine.” Time, Time, 28 May 2019, time.com/5593886/asian-american-spam-cuisine/. 

Museum, Makawao. “The Komoda Story.” Makawao History Museum, Makawao History Museum, 30 Dec.

2020, www.makawaomuseum.org/digexhibits/the-komoda-story. 

“What Is Spam, Anyway?” Hormel Foods, Reader’s Digest, 10 May 2019, www.hormelfoods.com/newsroom/news/what-is-spam-anyway/. 

Wong, Kathleen. “What’s ‘Crack Seed,’ One of Hawai’i’s Favorite Snacks?” Travel, National Geographic, 4 May 2022, www.nationalgeographic.com/travel/article/whats-crack-seed-one-of-hawaiis-favorite-snacks.