Maui, Day 4: Tropical Fruit Salad and a Red Sand Beach

The thing about staying at the end of the road to Hana for a week is that you're at the end of the road to Hana. Meaning there's not much in the way of stores or restaurants. Fortunately, if you stock up with provisions ahead of time at Costco and Mana Foods, and if you happen to be staying in a little bungalow in the middle of the jungle with a well-stocked kitchen, and if you adore collecting fruit from roadside fruit stands as you wend your way from place to place during the day, you can cook up just about anything.

Say, for example:

Breakfast

Heavenly, just-baked macademia nut banana bread from Hana Farms (just before Hana, and just after the little stand that purports to sell "Maui's best banana bread" but in fact sells, as far as we can tell, banana-less banana bread, which is basically the opposite).

Tropical fruit salad, inspired by breakfast a few days ago at Hale Ho'okipa Inn (which is where you should stay if you're ever in Maui and want a beautiful, restful retreat nestled in a lovely garden near both Haleakala and delicious food).

Ingredients (Serves 2-3)

1/2 papaya, diced

About the same amount of pineapple, diced

1 large star fruit, sliced crosswise*

1 apple banana, sliced

(or sub whatever you find at a roadside fruit stand for any of this)

1 ripe passion fruit**

Toss everything together, chill if desired, then serve. Dipping the banana bread in the extra juice is highly, highly recommended. Possibly even required.

*To prepare the star fruit, wash and dry, then stand up on one end and slice off just the very outer browned edges that make the five points of the star. Then just trim the ends, slice crosswise into stars, and de-seed when necessary.

**To pick a ripe passion fruit, look for the wrinkled and ugly ones...pretty and smooth on the outside means you'll be puckering when you try to eat it. To use, cut in half crosswise, and spoon out the seeds and pulp over the other fruit like a sauce.

Lunch

Blue marlin and sea asparagus poke from Costco (that's right, the Maui Costco does poke, sashimi, you name it), seaweed salad (also from Costco), zucchini and kale salads from the (excellent) salad bar at Mana Foods in Paia, avocado from somewhere...possibly the tree outside.

Dinner

Blue marlin with lemongrass, ginger, bok choy, coconut milk, and sea asparagus over jungle rice, topped with local papaya and Maui gold pineapple.