Culinary Crush

With wins this big the Dragon Post wanted to do an interview with one of the key players, senior Kamaha’o Kanekoa. This is what he had to say.

DP: We heard you folks recently did really well at a competition on Oahu.

KK: We were competing in the FFCLA competitions for food innovations so we had to create the next big hit for our peers.  We came up with our Hawaiian Trail Mix. Ours was a mix of three kinds of dried poke. We had to run three taste- tests with more than 50 peers, teachers, etc. and also we had to meet health requirements which means the right amount of fiber, grams of fat, not too many calories. Our snack had to be healthy and delicious. We took that to Oahu, and competed against all the other islands, basically every  high school in Hawaii was there. 

DP: Wow!

 KK: Luckily, with a little bit of luck and a lot of practice we actually came out in first place.

DP: Amazing, Hey I didn’t get to taste-test that – where was I?

KK: Ha ha

DK: I have a question about the types of food that were a part of your competition, were they all based on a snack food like trail mix?

KK: It could be anything you wanted, it would just had to be a snack made for your peers. That was the criteria. Ours was made with a shoyu, a spicy and a Hawaiian poke. We mixed it together and had to dehydrate it for ten hours, so it was kind of like like a dried fish, so we basically, took another favorite snack, a traditional dried aku and kind of put a twist on it.

DP: So this is a savory trail mix, not sweet. Are you going to try and market it?

KK: Hopefully. From the feedback we got people actually, wanting to get more of it so it could turn into an actual thing but for now, we just have it as our project.

DP: Who else took some gold and silver at the competition?

KK: Our whole group did good, me and Caleb, we placed first place and got gold in food innovations. Then two of our freshmen, who entered for the first time, Zaylen and Kaliiwai, also got gold.  Brandy also placed gold.  Kaimi and Danica placed silver in their cooking competition events and the boys placed bronze for the knife-cutting event. We all did different events, nothing was the same.

DP: You guys are amazing. As always our culinary department here at Honoka’a does us proud. Kudos to you and your sister, Kaui Kanekoa who is the teacher and leader in all this. Thats really great!

Congratulations to: