Until three years ago, the home cook could also count on the home economists to find a recipe for chicken long rice for 100 for a baby lu'au, tell whether food that got left out on the counter was safe to eat and decipher the mystery of how many ounces there are in a No. 2 can.

Into the 1990s, your electric bill would bring with it news of cooking classes in the HECO auditorium in downtown Honolulu, at the Hilton Hawaiian Village or at the Neal Blaisdell Center.

Your children would hear lectures on electricity from HECO consumer educators, and people with disabilities got training in cooking and other life skills from home-service representatives — who often volunteered their time on weekends for this and other projects.

All that ended on O'ahu in 2002, when home economist Julia Cabatu retired.

"I'm the last one they hired, and that's it," said Cabatu.

"You were so good, they didn't need any more," quipped Pat Rea, who, with Regina Ting, makes up the trio who brought to a close almost 80 years of the home-economist tradition at HECO on O'ahu. Two other home economists, both nearing retirement age, continue to serve on Maui and the Big Island.

Sit Rea, Ting and Cabatu down over coffee at Kaka'ako Kitchen and the war stories and memories flow.

Rea and Ting worked together for more than 30 years and co-authored "100 Years of Island Cooking," HECO's 1991 recipe collection. Rea also reviewed recipes for "A Taste to Remember," a cookbook now on sale to benefit Aloha United Way (see accompanying story). Cabatu was with the team 26 years.

Stories abound

The mission of their department, which had various names over the years, was first to teach people how to use electricity and electrical appliances — when plantation camps were wired after World War II, the utility sent early home economists door to door to offer people incentives to switch from kerosene and other forms of fuel. Later, during the oil crisis of the 1970s, the home economists preached energy conservation.

Although they lectured school kids on how electricity worked, advised consumers on lighting and even escorted people through an appliance showroom at HECO headquarters, Rea said, "pretty much the job revolved around food."

"And doesn't everything revolve around food?" Cabatu asked, rhetorically.

The three women — who prefer the title "family and consumer science professional" to the rather dated but better-known designation "home economist" — say they miss each other after working together day-in, day-out for so long. And they have lots of stories.

There are stories about writing, editing, testing and demonstrating hundreds of the more than 5,000 recipes that are now in the company database. When she's not visiting her grandchildren on the Mainland, Ting has been volunteering her time to go through the database and clean up any errors or inconsistencies that resulted as the recipes were transferred from typewritten file cards to the computerized memory banks. It took her months just to get through the As.

Rea said that, early on, the HECO positions were seen as "glamour" jobs, rare opportunities for young women of the time to pursue a career outside of teaching or nursing. For a while, the women wore uniforms — Ting recalls pinstriped, two-piece outfits in pink that made her think of hospital candystripers.

Their partner in all this was a cartoon character made up of a couple of jagged lines and a head like a lightbulb, known to Islanders as Reddy Kilowatt. Reddy was the utility's ambassador, spouting slogans about the benefits of electricity, and its proper use. There was a Reddy Kilowatt doll that made the rounds. Once, Rea recalled, she was wearing her uniform and a child asked her, "Are you Mrs. Reddy Kilowatt?"

Strange calls

Ting recalled a woman who asked how to use up a large amount of mushrooms. She obliged with some ideas then asked, "Just out of curiosity, where did you get all those mushrooms?" "Oh, they're just sprouting up in my yard," the woman said. Ting's eyes widen, half in alarm and half in amusement, as she tells the tale. She put a quick stop to the woman's plan to eat the poisonous toadstools.

There was another caller who used to ring up almost daily with a different story about some oddball thing she'd bought on sale and wasn't sure how to use — pig's feet or fish eggs or some such thing.

Rea remembered a question about how to cook a ham. She told the person to put it on a rack and place it in the oven. "But don't you take it out of the can first?" the consumer asked.

There were always callers who wanted to know what they could substitute for key ingredients in recipes — an almond cookie, for example. No, don't have any almonds, any sugar, any butter, any flour, but I want to make this recipe. The home economists were trained to be unfailingly polite and helpful, but it's clear that there was many a laugh and a rolled eye after the receiver was replaced.

Thanksgiving was always a frantically busy time in the days before Islanders had access to a toll-free turkey hot line. No one, it seemed, could remember what to do with a turkey from one year to the next, Rea said.

Ting recalled that, when Cabatu gave her last Reddy Kilowatt cooking class for HECO, she broke into a chorus of "Aloha 'Oe," and then, overcome with emotion, laid her head down on the demonstration table among the pies she had just prepared and burst into tears.