Kokorice and toast

I got up very late this morning due to the fact that I have a bit of a cold.  Well, that wasn’t the only reason.  I did stay up til 3 in the morning reading.  I seem to have frequent bouts of insomnia these days.  I’ve heard that this can be attributed to age, well, I am getting older and older every year, duh!  It can also simply be that I miss my hubby and worry about him all the time now.  I just wish all of our troops would just come home already, after all, that was one of the reasons why I voted for Obama.  But that’s not really the subject of this post.  Actually, think of this as a “how to” post – a how to eat kokorice to be more precise.

So, I was saying that I got up very late this morning, just before 10a.m. to be exact.  The boys were already up and had been up for at least a couple of hours.  I know this because even though I tried to ignore it, I could hear them playing rockband upstairs.  Got up, brushed my teeth, then decided that I wanted something other than cold cereal this morning, and besides it was kinda too early for the left-over chicken casserole from yesterday.  Luckily for us, I had everything I needed to make kokorice.

Kokorice is a yummy concoction of rice, coconut milk, and cocoa.  In Samoa, its called kokoalaisa, but my kids have called it “kokorice” since they were small, and that’s what it goes by in our house.  Now I love kokorice for a number of reasons: 1, it’s super easy and fast to make. 2, it’s pretty cheap and it goes a long way if you happen to be feeding a whole army of nephews and nieces who just happen to drop by since it’s a holiday and school is out for the day. 3, it makes me feel good knowing that I’ve fed my kids a nice hot breakfast at least for that one day. 4, you really can’t screw it up even if you’re one of those people who burn just about everything else.  Just add lots of sugar and the kids will love it:-).

If you’re going to have kokorice, you have to have toast to go along with it.  I don’t know about you but here is how my boys eat kokorice.  The oldest will eat his pretty much like most of us except for the fact that he likes to put a couple of cubes of ice in his while it’s steaming hot.  He claims it makes it tastes better, never tried it so I wouldn’t know.  Instead of having it with toast or bread like most people, our second oldest prefers his with Doritos.  I’m not kidding, Doritos.  If we happen to be out, then just plain potato chips will do for him.  Absolutely weird, and gross as far as I’m concerned, but hey he seems to like it and so far it hasn’t made him sick yet.   Now our youngest will not scoop it up and eat kokorice with a spoon as one would expect.  Instead, he dips his toast in it and then bites his toast and dip by dip he manages to finish most of the liquid in his kokorice leaving the rice for either dad or mom to finish.  Did I miss the part about finishing our kids foods for them somewhere in the parent manual?

So there you have it, a “how to” eat kokorice courtesy of my boys.  All you ever needed to know about this favorite Samoan dish! If you are dying to try it out and don’t have a clue how to make it, there are a number of sites that offer recipes for a variety of Samoan dishes, just google “kokorice recipe” and it’ll come up.  Honest!

There is something about the food that we grow up with that just makes you feel better, isn’t there?  Kokorice and sapasui does that for me, and fa’alifu kalo and pisupo of course.  Oh who am I kidding, I love all kinds of Samoan food, they may not be good for my hips but they definitely make me feel better, lol. 

Now I have Samoan food on the brain, next post will definitely have to be about the tastes and smells at the makeki fou in Apia.  Pink, yellow, and green pagikekes, there’s a throwback to the good old days back home.  Fa’akau papa anyone??