ONE FINGER POI

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 672, 25 May 1929, Page 5

ONE FINGER POI

STRANGE HAWAIIAN DISH The chief interest in any country I (writes Dorothy Dixj is its people, | and none are more intriguing than these big, gentle, good-natured, childlike members of the fast-vanishing Hawaiian race. The purebred Hawaiians are a fluid race, which has mingled with the great tide of foreign peoples who have swept over their island and been engulfed by them. In the country districts the people live in little thatched huts, and before the door you can see an old rnan or an old woman making poi, the native dish upon which the Hawaiian? mainly subsist. This is made of the taro plant. The root of the taro is boiled until soft, and pounded on a board

' with a stone pestle until it is reduced ;to a pulp. It is then put in a calabash, a big gourd, and mixed with water, and allowed to ferment for two or three days, when it is considered 1 ready to eat. I It is eaten by sticking your hugers into it, winding the mess around them and sucking it off, and is known a - “one-finger poi” or “two-finger pc i, ’ according to the thickness and stick - ness of it. As it requires no dishes to serve it in, or dish-washing, or dail v cooking, it reduces life to a state of simplicity that New Zealand housekeepers might ■well envy. ! Honolulu presents many fascinating i features of native life. Visitors throng to the islands in ever-increasing nuni- ; bers every year to see the glorious at- > tractions of this fairyland of the Pacific* _______________