Crafting up recipes

A circle of creative HECO employees artfully combines a recipe swap with scrapbooking

YOU WOULD THINK that talk at a potluck involving shared recipes would center on food, but you'd be wrong. At a table filled with recipe collectors at Hawaiian Electric Co. headquarters downtown, the chatter was all about crafting -- embossing, which die-cutting machine works best, and the ins and outs of creating the perfect ribbon bow.

The recipes were incidental to the real project, scrapbooking.

It all started when HECO accounting clerk Kelly Kanja participated in her first scrapbook recipe swap with friends and wanted to do the same with her co-workers. The women had all traded recipes before, but all those loose cards and pieces of paper had a way of getting lost and going unused, simply adding to the clutter in kitchen drawers. The scrapbooks offered a way of tidying things up, while allowing the women to put latent creativity to use.

Cindi Apana, who works in the office of Rep. Kirk Caldwell, confesses a love of craft gadgets, and admitted, "I have thousands of rubber stamps. I have thousands of tools, even one to make your own rubber stamps. But this is actually the first thing I ever made."

Putting all her pent-up creative energy to work, Apana came up with one of the most elaborate pages, featuring sliding shoji-pattern doors that open to reveal her tofu casserole recipe.

Apana was invited to participate in the swap by Sandra Nada, an Industrial Relations Assistant at HECO, who also admits to more "collecting" than "creating."

"I always think that one day I would have time to make something."

She ended up taking a full two months to complete the 20 pages that would be distributed to the participants.

"It was hardest to come up with the idea for what to do," she said. What she came up with were multicolored rubber-stamped dots, about the size of M&M candies, cut out and attached to her recipe page with caulking glue that gave the dots a three-dimensional raised effect.

"She always has the most complicated ideas," Apana said. "She couldn't just punch out the holes, she had to cut them all out."

"What I like about swaps is that you get ideas from everyone," said Leta Wakamatsu, who was admiring Christine Jessop's page. Jessop, a corporate communications clerk typist for HECO, combined wedding invitation papers with metal details from Christmas ornaments.

Wakamatsu, supervisor for mailing services at HECO, considers herself a card maker. She makes her one-of-a-kind creations to surprise friends on special occasions. While they could serve as a profitable hobby, she hasn't joined the craft-fair circuit, choosing to sell only a few during Aloha United Way fundraising drives hosted by HECO.

"We'll make them to trade with each other, but sometimes it's so hard to part with them," Wakamatsu said. "You know what we do? When we send each other birthday cards we attach a Post-it Note so that person can use it again."

Etiquette buffs might observe that this could represent the only case in which re-gifting is acceptable.

DETERMINING how many to allow into this scrapbooking circle depended on the number of pages they had to fill. Heading to PriceBusters, the women found 20-page photo albums, cheap.

Not everyone they invited wanted to take the time to create 20 scrapbook recipe pages, but once the book was completed and passed around, co-workers came around asking if they could buy a copy.

By then it was too late. The women agreed, "You don't get it if you don't participate."

As for the lunch party, noting how many in the group had to be prodded to actually work with the craft items they'd collected, they also wanted to make sure the recipes would be used, and the potluck was one way to whet their appetites for more home cooking.

Here are a few recipes to try when you're not busy with your own scrapbook or craft projects:

Leta's Rosemary Chicken

Leta Wakamatsu

2 pounds chicken thighs
2 tablespoons oil
Salt and pepper, to taste
1/2 onion, coarsely chopped
1 heaping tablespoon minced garlic
1 can (8 ounces) tomato sauce
1 can (8 ounces) water
1/4 cup sherry
1/2 bunch parsley, chopped
2 to 3 teaspoons fresh chopped rosemary (1 to 2 sprigs)
1 teaspoons thyme

Brown chicken in oil. Season with salt and pepper. Add onion and garlic; cook until transluscent. Add remaining ingredients. Simmer 40 minutes. Serves 4.

Tofu Casserole

Cindi Apana

1 pound ground pork
1/4 cup dried mushrooms
1 small white onion
1/4 cup canned bamboo shoots, chopped
1 or 2 blocks tofu (soft or firm)
2 eggs

» Sauce:
3 tablespoons sake or mirin
1/4 teaspoon salt
6 tablespoons soy sauce
2 tablespoons sugar

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Combine sauce ingredients; set aside.

Brown pork and drain oil. Add vegetables, brown. Add sauce, then simmer 10 minutes.

Slice tofu into 1/2-inch slabs. Line bottom of casserole dish with tofu. Spoon pork and vegetable mixture over tofu.

Beat eggs; pour over top of vegetable mixture. Line top with tofu slabs. Bake 35 to 40 minutes. Serves 6.

Broken Glass Jello

Merle Shinsato

5 boxes different flavored Jell-O (3 ounces each), for example, lime, orange, strawberry, grape, lemon or pineapple
5 cups water

» Milk mixture:
4 cups skim milk
4 envelopes unflavored gelatin
1/4 cup sugar

Dissolve each box of flavored Jell-O in its own 1 cup of boiling water. Pour into five separate pans and refrigerate until firm. Cut into dice-size pieces and spread into 9-by-13-inch pan.

To make milk mixture: Dissolve gelatin in skim milk by bringing mixture almost to a boil. Let cool completely.

Pour cooled milk mixture over Jell-O pieces. Refrigerate. Cut into squares resembling stained glass.

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