48th Annual Food and New Products Show

My memory may be failing me, but wasn’t the Food and New Products Show larger last year? If I recall correctly, the booths occupied not only the Neal Blaisdell Exhibition Hall, but the Arena as well.

Ah well, be that as it may, this year’s show was interesting anyway. The wife and I received a couple of complimentary admission tickets from Vacations Hawaii when I booked my next Las Vegas trip and walked into their office at just the right time.

I don’t know exactly how many vendors and exhibitors had set up, but it had to be at least a couple of hundred – everything from plate lunches to local-made food products, from clothing to rail transportation proponents, from jewelry to pet products, from you name it to you name it.

One of the things I did was talk to a few vendors to ask them how they were doing at the show. The general consensus was that they all did “okay.” Not great, not bad, but okay. Interesting, as it gives a clue in microcosm of what the state’s economy is looking like at the moment.

The first booth I visited was a nursery, with an unusual flower on display. People were crowded around looking at the Lime Puff flower (Schaueria calycotricha), which grows on a three-foot tall shrub and is used in Hawaiian lei-making.

I thought about buying one, but it was the first booth of hundreds we’d planned to visit and I couldn’t feature myself walking around the exhibition hall carrying a potted plant, so I decided to return before we left. Guess what? I forgot to return. Oh well, no big deal.

The next booth that drew my attention was one selling bottled and jarred Hawaiian salts. These salts were harvested from local salt farms and from deep waters along the Big Island’s Kona Coast. They are beautiful salts – maroon red , cloud white, lava black and bamboo leaf gray-green. Nice names, huh? I made those up myself.

 

A heavenly aroma wafted around the aisle, sent our way by some women cooking teriyaki samples in their booth. I had previously decided not to sample too many foods – a stupid decision, I know, but intentions were good. Besides, if I tried something and liked it, chances are I'd buy it, and I didn't want to walk out of there carrying 25 pounds of stuff. 

 

One of the hottest booths (hot as in spicy) was one selling various local chili pepper waters. You know, the kind you find in bottles at restaurant tables, sometimes without labels, sometimes orange, sometimes red, but all the time hot and spicy enough to raise blisters on your tongue. Well, they had bottles of the stuff.

I’m not exactly a wimp when it comes to hot stuff, but I do know my limitations, so I definitely did not sample any of these.

My favorite booth was one that was selling something called “Wee-n-See.” It’s a little pad that you float in the toilet and coax your young child to pee (er, "wee") on it. When the kid does that, the blue pad turns color – a kind of burnt orange – and a picture appears.

I chastised myself later for not picking up a brochure describing the “whys” of the product. So I had to check it out online when I got home. When the child pees (er, "wees") on the floating pad, a picture appears as a reward. See, it’s used for toilet training. Proper pee produces picture. Aim well and you will be rewarded.

My astute observation: "It gives the kid something to aim for in life." That brought down the house. Everybody (a crowd of four) standing there laughed. I should charge admission, no?