Since the new year I’ve developed something of an expensive habit…well, I guess it’s not a habit so much as a choice, but it is something that I find I want to do more and more, the more often I do it, and I suppose this is the case with most habits…So on the day after Christmas, my boyfriend, ♥ well the man to whom I had been engaged for 29 hours ♥, and I went out to lunch to celebrate our new ‘relationship status.’  He was in the mood for sushi and I was in the mood for anything that made him happy and after we were seated I said to him, “just order for us both.”  I love to try new things or to try things that have been prepared in a way I’ve not had before.  I am not what they call a ‘cheap date’ and I really will try anything.  When I go out to eat I generally try to order something that I would never make at home, primarily because I really do love to cook and I really do love my kitchen, and to me it seems silly to order food outside of the home that you could actually just make in your home…so I was excited to let him order for us both because then I’ve no choice but to try everything and anything.

I first had sushi in the early 90’s in New York City.  I worked with a woman who became a dear friend to me & who had a sister-in-law who was Japanese and lived in the city and who, to keep fluent in her native tongue, worked three nights a week at a Japanese restaurant.  My first adventure to this restaurant with my friend blew my mind…her sister-in-law ordered for the table, which was not only a long table, but a crowded table with an assortment of their mutual friends and family, and the food quickly started to be delivered and it just kept coming for an hour…plate after plate and bowl after bowl and I tried everything.  I also asked what nothing was until I had tried it, because as much as I like to try new things, I know that my brain might immediately make an assumption and I find that no matter how hard I try, once my brain thinks one thing, the rest of my senses follow…so to me, the NOT knowing what it is, is a better way to experience it fully.  I learned that day that I don’t like octopus, the texture just does not work with my mouth and my tongue.  I learned that day that I don’t like fish eggs of any size or color, again the texture and the ‘pop’ and the way they feel against my teeth and tongue I just can’t handle.  I also learned that I like wasabi paste but do not like fresh ginger. I also learned that I love fish and rice, and not so much the rolls that seemed so popular with everybody else at the table…so I like to have that kind of full sensory eating experience, a table full of beautifully presented and impeccably prepared food to try and try again.

So on the day after Christmas we sipped champagne and laughed and smiled and ate and ate and ate…we talked about how we might decide to set a date, how we might elope instead, where we might have a party, what we could or couldn’t afford, and all the while we ate…it was honestly one of the best meals I have ever had in my life.  Perhaps a combination of feeling dearly loved, blissfully happy, unexpectedly excited, and really hungry…and it was simply a GREAT afternoon, however, something happened that day that I did not expect…something got stimulated in my brain that made me begin to CRAVE sushi, like to the point that every time I had nothing planned for dinner or no food really in the house to make a complete meal, I would say, “let’s go for sushi,” which is a fine thing to say if you have a significant disposable income, which we do not, and it is a fine thing to say if perhaps you live in a large town or city where there are a significant number of restaurants in which to eat, which we do not…to make a too long story shorter, we have now spent many hundreds of dollars since the new year that could have been spent on say a wedding, or a wedding dress, or plane tickets to Vegas, or maybe even the electric bill, on sushi.  You know that adage about give a man a fish or teach a man to fish…you know it…so now I am on a mission…I want to learn how to make it myself.  I want to learn how to properly prepare sushi grade fish, I certainly know how to make sticky rice and shape it into a small football…I want to be able to do this myself…I am sure somebody gives lessons, or I might just search youtube where I have found out how to do just about everything else…take a girl for sushi and she eats dinner, teach a girl how to make it and she and her boyfriend eat happily ever after ♥