What's for dinner?

There's a Cab Calloway song that has become the Fisher Family motto: Everybody eats when they come to my house. There's nothing like breaking bread with people in their own home that brings people together. A favorite meal for us to host with people is a crab boil. When crab goes on sale, we stockpile it in our freezer until such time as we can host a decent crab boil, bring close friends around the dinner table, dump the hot crab, corn, sausage, potatoes onto newspaper in the middle of the table, then everyone start cracking and eating and talking. People talk when they're eating crab. I guess it has to do with the laid-back atmosphere; no utensils allowed.

Another favorite meal is Kulani's dry-aged beef. Only select friends get invited to those because you must love steak, and you must be able to eat steak between medium and rare. No well-done or even medium-well. If you want that, Kulani will cook you a piece of chicken. Because in Kulani's mind, you will not be able to distinguish the subtle differences of a dry-aged steak if you take your steak well-done. And since Kulani has lovingly babied the beef for three weeks to get the beef aged to perfection, you will take the steak as he specifies. It is quite simply delicious. It tastes better than most of the high-end steak restaurants in the state. He buys a big tenderloin from Costco, then wraps it in towels and places it in the bottom of our refrigerator. Every night and morning, he removes the towels and reapplies fresh-clean ones. By the end of three weeks, he has marbled, mouth-watering beef.

We also host a yearly luau. Kulani loves to treat people to his "comfort food." We've had as many as 120 people at one of his luaus. The neighbors have come to expect it. We try to feed people in waves. Family comes between 1 and 2 p.m. Then friends come around 3 to 5 p.m. And last comes all the neighbors. It is a time-consuming and labored ordeal, but Kulani wouldn't have it any other way. Occasionally, we even kill a pig and cook it in our back yard.