POG

This is what I had for lunch today.

I sort of constructed my own lunch today, sort of.  I got two scoops of rice from Zippy's restaurant, which we'll get to in another post - anybody who has spent any length of time in Hawaii knows Zippy's restaurant - two different types of poke from the fishmonger at Safeway, and to drink: POG.  The rice was standard, the poke was delicious, the POG was refreshing as always.

Pretty much every fishmonger at every grocery store in Hawaii sells poke, that's how much we love it.  Poke is marinated raw fish (I covered it in another post), and I got a quarter-pound of two different kinds:  Wasabi Poke and Tsunami Poke.  I'm not exactly sure what's in the wasabi poke, I know there's definitely wasabi -  related to mustard and will open your nostrils - along with a creamy mayo sauce.  The tsunami poke has imitation crab, spicy mayo, and I don't know what else.  I don't care.  They're both 'ono (delicious) and I'm actually salivating right now a few hours later just thinking about it.

And then there's POG.  Oh, sweet, sweet, POG, my favorite juice.  POG is the love child of passion fruit juice, orange juice, and guava juice.  Blend those all together and you've got an amazingly sweet and tangy tropical creation.  An ice-cold glass on a hot day will hit the spot, guaranteed.

Passion fruit, Hawaiian name Lilikoi, is a fruit that grows on a vine.  It's actually invasive and grows out of control in some parts of Hawaii, but can also be found all over the world in warm climates.  There are two varieties, the purple and the yellow, we predominantly have the yellow.  At first the vine grows a psychedelic looking flower, which eventually turns into the fruit.  The skin of the fruit is hard and inedible, it's the inner pulp and seeds that you eat (supposedly the purple variety is a little more supple, but I've never tried it).  It's very tangy with a little crunch because of the seeds.  It's a little too tangy and tart sometimes for me to eat a large fruit, but I usually try.  I find them a bunch on hiking trails.

Guava is another fruit found in warm climates that grows out of control in some parts of Hawaii.  It's a sweet fruit and they say you can eat the seeds, but I've never come across a wild guava in Hawaii with seeds that made me say "yum".  If you find guava, bite a hole in the skin, suck out the pulp, and spit out the seeds.  That's the best way.  You'll come across guava on quite a few hiking trails.

You mix the juice of those two fruits with orange juice - which doesn't grow wild in Hawaii - and you get POG (Passion Orange Guava, like "bog" but with a "p", "pog"), which has the best qualities of the different juices and is ssssooooooo good.  If you've never tried it, you gotta.  You can find it in just about every store,  and sometimes it's on sale for really cheap.

I'll probably finish this half-gallon by tonight.

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