Where's the Beef?

Fantastic event here on the island last night. We drove up to the Waikaloa Hilton with Cheryl & Rog and ate our hearts out. We feasted on the annual 'Taste of the Range', a food fest with Hawaii Island Grass-Fed Beef. There were at least 50 area resturants featuring mostly their best beef recipes also with some lamb, pork and even a goat dish. Parker Ranch is the largest privately owned cattle ranch in the US and all their beef is grass-fed, raised without added hormones and without antibiotics. Yes, we do eat more fish than beef but when we do have beef it is the best. While speaking of Parker Ranch I have to mention Paniolo. They are the cowboys we still have here and we just had a celebration and of course a parade. Doesn't take much to cause a parade to happen here. But 100 years ago a Hawaiian cowboy/paniolo by the name of Ikua Purdy stunned the American West by winning the 1908 World Roping Championship in Cheyenne, Wyoming. The paniolo history is interesting and adds to the mystic while visiting Parker Ranch. Since I love history, here is the short history of cowboys in Hawaii. Captain George Vancouver brought cattle as gifts to King Kamehameha in 1792. The first horses arrived in Hawai'i about 1804. Vaqueros were invited to the islands in 1832 by Hawai'i's king to teach Hawaiians how to ride and rope wild cattle. Since these islands are in the middle of the ocean people either came or were brought here from all over the world. I suppose those vaqueros were from either Spain or Mexico. Portuguese were brought here to foreman the sugarcane plantations. In 1900 after a devastating hurricane hit Puerto Rico thousands came here to work in those plantations.