Kitty Quest

Note : This is an old post which I half-wrote and then abandoned.

I like animals.

You would recognize this for the understatement it is, if you saw the virtual zoo of stuffed animals, I house in my apartment. At last count I had a donkey, a monkey, a giant bear, a giraffe, a cat, two dogs, a hippo, an elephant, a sea lion, a lion, a lamb, and a deer. As a natural progression of this fascination with soft, furry creatures, I decided to adopt a pet.

Ideally my first pet would have been a dog, a nice big one at that (Or not, because though I like the idea of having a big dog, its the small furry one's with hair falling all over their face, that reduce me to a puddle of mush). Dogs, however, come with a lot of responsibility, financial and otherwise, especially in this country. They have to be walked twice a day, unless you enjoy cleaning dog poo off your carpet. They need exercise, run up vet bills, and can't be left alone overnight. I'm not saying this is not how it should be, but its a huge commitment, one which I would love to make when I'm in a more settled situation. Enter simpler solution - Cat, and thus began the kitty quest.

I started off with considering adopting from a shelter. But I didn't want to rescue an animal and return it if things didn't work out. I spent weeks drooling over cute kittens and cats on craigslist waiting for a perfect older gentle cat to be put up for adoption, whose owners wouldn't mind taking him or her back if I decided to move and couldn't take him along. Quite a wish-list and one which was obviously impossible - why would anyone give away their cat only to take it back later. Anyways, I did contact a couple of people and while they were very interested in the beginning, they either changed their mind about giving up their pet or stopped responding. I was irritated by this at the time, but I now realize its perfectly natural to not want to part with your pet even though it seems the logical thing to do.

So back to shelter it was. In the course of my search, I had also realized that if I adopted an older cat, it would be not only difficult for her to adjust to the new situation, moving to India would probably end up being too much disruption for her. And if for some reason I had to find another home for her before I left, it would be so much more difficult.

So that made it a young cat from a shelter. How young? I first contacted someone for a 6 month old kitten. He had already been adopted, but the lady also mentioned that it would probably not be a good idea to adopt such a young cat with my work/commute schedule. Next up I found this beautiful tuxedo cat, about a year old. However, I was going to be of town for a couple of days and when I did get back, the tuxedo was still at the shelter, but the lady I had been talking to had this 9 month old cream and white (as she put it) kitty, whom the shelter folks had loved so much, they had sent him ahead of schedule. I decided to see this cat and she brought him over. He was sitting huddled up in his carrier but once he came out, he started purring loudly and wanted to climb on everyone's shoulders.

And that's how Kittu came home.

He's now been around for 10 months and I think he likes it here. He sleeps, eats cat food and cheese, purrs, stretches, grooms, runs around wildly, fetches paper balls, greets me at the door, snuggles and then sleeps some more. Apparently cats don't really miss their owners if they leave, but I sure would miss him, so its next stop India for both of us.

A Vegeterian Guide to Eating-Out in Hawaii

I turned vegeterian 2 years ago, and since then barring a few bad experiences I've had mostly smooth sailing. I eat out a LOT, and anyone who's lived in US for any length of time would know that veggie options apart from the ubiquitous garden salad are hard to come by in most restaurants. However, with a little adjustment, a little lowering of expectatations and a little creative ordering, eating out can still be a lot of fun. Indian restaurants ofcourse don't need any of these but since we eat Indian food at home, when eating out we like to try something different.

Getting to the title of the post, we recently vacationed in Hawaii and like most first-times to Hawaii went to two islands - Oahu and Maui. The vacation was amazing and I was bowled over by both the islands except for one glitch - Hawaii happends to be not so vegeterian friendly. The local cuisine is almost exclusively barbecued meat and seafood. Surprisingly, finding veggie food was a much bigger problem in Oahu although it is much more populous than Maui and has a downtown which is as close to any city in mainland USA as it gets. For blogging purposes I have identified 2 main reasons for this -
a) We were unprepared. The first couple of days we kept trying to find a fancy restaurant with local falvor etc. which would give us something to eat. Not a very good idea. Recommendation 1 - If you're a vegetarian, stick to known turf in Oahu for food- Italian, Indian (there is only one in all of Hawaii as far as we could find), P F Chang's version of Chinese. Go to fancy places but stick to drinks and chips(/appetizers) as we did on one ocassion.
b) We were unprepared for the north shore. Which btw is stunning (as seen through a car window). We spent most of our day at the polynesian center which is very fancy and popular and everything but has zero, and I mean it, absolutely nothing for vegetarians when it comes to food. Given that you're expected to spend half a day or more there, this was a killer. Recommendation 2 - Pack food for the north shore or stop at the small village which falls on the way and eat at one of the many pizzerias we saw.

Now we come to Maui. We struck lucky on our very first night when we found this AMAZING stir fried tofu with rice, and flatbread on our resort's room service menu. I really wanted to eat that tofu again but we never ordered room service after that and they don't serve it in any of their restaurants - weird! Breakfasts were great on all days - resort buffet on 3 days and longhi's (I'll come back to it) on one. Our second night was our worst food experience in Maui. We went to the resort's restaurant called the Mala Lounge but once we took a look at the menu, we figured we won't find anything to eat there. We politely apologized to our waitress and were about to leave when this artsy looking old man on the table next to us got up and started telling us how good that restaurant is for veggies. He mentioned that his wife is vegan/vegetarian and likes this restaurant by far the best. Our waitress chimes in and says she could customize a bunch of stuff for us blah blah. To cut it short, we order and its awful. We eat nothing and when the waitress comes to pick up the check (by this time the artsy gentleman has left), she looks at our untouched plates and says - 'You should really try Longhi's. I was vegetarian for many years and they're really great. The man who convinced you to stay owns this restaurant, so.. (shrug)'.

So we did try Longhi's and its a great place for veggies. They actually have a lot of vegetable entrees on the menu and not just pasta. Infact the one we tried was sooooo good that my mouth waters thinking of it. Recommendation 3 - Eat at Longhi's. I think that chain exists in Oahu as well. When eating there, try their cauliflower fried a little in olive oil and served with chillies and olives - wonderful.

Another Maui gem. You find absolutely nothing to eat (except fruit stalls and guavas falling off trees everywhere) on the road to Hana. However, Paia where the road to Hana starts is a good place to grab something. We had lunch at this small cafe called the Moana surfrider and they served us a wonderful pasta. I remember seeing other veggie stuff on the menu as well and thai stuff for dinner. Wanted to go again but didn't get round to it. Recommendation 4 - Eat at this cafe or possibly check out other places in Paia as well. We didn't have time as we had started late.

All in all we found great food in Maui except that one time. One last thing, which I have to mention when talking about eating out in Hawaii. Food is expensive there! So be prepared for that if you're going there anytime.