The Riches of Hawaii, With Jack Johnson Jack Johnson, 38, is an Oahu native, a former professional surfer, and a popular singer-songwriter who will release his sixth album in the fall. The Johnson Ohana Charitable Foundation, which he founded with his wife, Kim, supports many organic and sustainable-food-related programs in Hawaii. He spoke by phone from Oahu about the riches of Hawaiian food and the symbolic power of pancakes. On what he eats when he returns home from a tour "My brother's always out fishing, so whatever he caught that day is what I eat. The next day I might go get a plate lunch, the basic meal in Hawaii, like soy sauce chicken with two scoops of rice and a scoop of macaroni salad and kimchi. It's all the different cultures on one plate. Then I try to do a couple of days of juice fast. That's not such a hardship in Hawaii, where everyone has fruit trees in the backyard. On cooking Hawaiian for a crowd "A lot of traditional Hawaiian food culture is gone, but for a big group or a party, there are still meals you always do even if your ancestors aren't Hawaiian. It takes a lot of people to make poi" - a starchy staple made by pounding baked taro root - "because you have to get the taro really smooth. And you need to dig a big imu, an underground oven to cook a kalua pig. We always do that for first-birthday parties. I am the youngest of three brothers, so I always did a lot of the digging. On the allure of banana pancakes, the subject of one of his songs "When I wrote that song I was thinking about these banana pancakes my mom used to make once a week, the thing that just said "weekend" to me. It was my job to mash the bananas. Now it's become sort of a joke because everyone asks me for the recipe, and it's not that the pancakes are so special, it's more about getting to stay in bed. We have amazing honey in Hawaii from flowers like lehua and lilikoi [passion fruit], so we use those on pancakes instead of maple syrup.