Tag: Food

  • Whole Lotta Nothing

    Ever the one to jump on every trend that goes by (if you can’t hear the sarcasm here, you should probably go read a different blog), I decided a while back to give The Whole 30 a try.

    Well, not exactly.

    I’d seen it mentioned approximated 19208934293859048549 times on Facebook, and somebody had asked one of my facebook friends that was on it a very basic question, so in a moment of Let Me Google That For You, Moron, I looked it up and answered, so I was aware of it. I didn’t really care.

    Then I read an article, The Boy With a Thorn in His Joints, and suddenly I became interested in… something. The article definitely doesn’t talk about The Whole 30, but it talks about food and joint pain, and well, I’ve got a whole lot of joint pain, going back three decades. More distressing to me is the level of chronic pain my daughter is in. Since The Whole 30 is basically an elimination diet (although it allows a few things I think we probably should have tried to give up too. Anyhow, knowing it is easier to get people on board when there is a website with instructions, I presented The Whole 30 as the plan to my family, and we agreed to do it. It took a while to get started because we needed to try to find 30 days when my husband would be in the country. This is more difficult than it seems like it should be.

    Yesterday was day 30. My husband ended up unexpected leaving the country on day 28. See? More difficult than one might think. He made it through day 29 via snacks brought on to the plane, and then just tried to do his best on the final day.

    So – how was it?

    I totally want to be typing about how much better I feel. Unfortunately it just isn’t true. I feel better than when I eat like crap, of course, but I don’t feel any better than when I eat my normal version of “good”. Over and above how I normally prefer to eat, the major differences were giving up dairy (I’ve never done that before), giving up gluten (I often avoid grains, but have never worried about small amounts of gluten in things), and giving up soy (which I never really paid attention to, but is in fuck all everything, ugh).

    So, now we start adding things back in.. One thing at a time, to look for a reaction, treating it more as an allergy/intolerance elimination study. Today is the first day that I can add something back in, and… I just don’t care. I mean, I am super glad it is over because it is a major inconvenience to avoid all gluten and soy. but today I mostly just feel like crap, so I’ve felt decidedly disinterested so far. Definitely not the less pain, more energy feeling I was hoping for.

  • Keeping you in the dark, and feeding you shit.

    So much going on; so little I feel like posting a word about.

    Today I present a cheat post. I made soup for somebody, and they asked me for the recipe. I hate being asked for the recipe. I don’t hate it because my stuff is secret. I don’t hate it because it takes time to write something up. I hate it because it always makes me feel like a disappointment, because I don’t really have useful recipe information.

    I have one friend who likes to watch me cook and try to write down a recipe for herself while I do it. She’s always asking me “how much” of something I used, or she gets distracted and misses a few steps and comes back and wants a recap. I just want to throw things at her (but I rarely do), because what I want to scream is “I DON’T KNOW!” which sounds pretty Alzheimer-y, since I just did it 5 minutes ago.

    But I am usually working to feel, look, taste, or smell in the kitchen, so I am not paying attention to what I am putting into the pot, and the amount of it, I am busy focusing on what is already in the pot, and how it is changing based on what I do.

    I rarely bake, because I don’t like recipes, and with baking, they are a lot more important.

    Anyhow, I typed up something about the soup I made, that they requested a recipe for, so I might as well post it here too.

    Mushroom Soup

    I don’t like cream of mushroom soup, and never have, so this soup was not designed to be a cream-less cream of mushroom soup. I just wanted a mushroom-y soup.

    I don’t cook with recipes and pretty much every thing I make is different each time I make it, because I try to use fresh ingredients. I design my menu around what I find at the grocery store, rather than planning my shopping list based on my menu.

    So, I might know I’d like to make mushroom soup, go to the store and not find any mushrooms I think are fit to use, but usually I find mushrooms, it is just that the varieties that look best (or the price points) change which ones I want to buy. The qualities of the ones I end up coming home with, change what seasonings I use in the soup, since I am trying to enhance certain flavors.

    So, the mushroom soup I made the other night, has the same basic idea as all my mushroom soups (mushroom + liquid blended together = soup), but the flavor nuances are totally different.

    The other night was about a pound of crimini mushrooms (basically the common white mushroom, but slightly more flavorful), and one large grown up version, the portobello.

    I sauteed a small amount of diced onions and 4 minced large garlic cloves in olive oil. I cleaned, sliced, and salted the crimini mushrooms, then tossed them in with the onions and garlic and drizzled more olive oil over it all.  Stir it up a bit then put a lid on it and turn it to low to sweat the mushrooms down.

    Then I added some fresh rosemary. I don’t know how much, I do it until the pot smells like mushrooms and rosemary, but not so much that it just smells like rosemary. I can’t smell the onions at all, because I really do use a small amount, to enhance flavors but not make it at all onion-y. I could still smell the garlic, but it isn’t overwhelming the scent of mushrooms. Mostly it smells a lot like mushrooms.

    Then I took it off the heat and begin adding chicken broth, which I often do from a box, but I happened to have made chicken broth from scratch recently and still had enough left.  I use an immersion blender to pulverize the mushrooms, and blend it all together into a thickened soup. I add the broth a little at a time, until I get the soup consistency that I want. I cook it in a much large pot than the amount of soup I want, so that I can do the blending without as much mess. It could be done in a blender too, but I have an immersion blender, so I don’t need to pour stuff into a blender and then back into the pot. I totally <3 immersion blenders. I take it off the heat before I do this so that I am less likely to seriously injure myself when I splatter soup all over me. I always splatter soup all over me while using the immersion blender. Once it was the consistency I wanted, I sprinkled in a little paprika and covered the soup and put it back on low heat.

    I chopped up the portobello into little cubes and in a pan and sauteed those with olive oil, salt, and a little bit of garlic powder. I often do this with a bit of bacon too, but didn’t for this particular meal, because it wasn’t a *”fat” Tuesday.

    Then I stir that into the soup, so that there is more variation in texture than the blended up soup mixture had on it’s own.

    That’s about it.  I do a bazillion other variations on it.

    * The friend I was cooking for does WW and has a weekly weigh in on Tuesday morning. There is traditionally much extra “healthy” eating on Monday to prepare for weigh in, and then Tuesday is celebratory gluttony. When cooking for this person, I try to make point friendly meals most days of the week, and make meals on Tuesday night that would leave the meeting leader rocking back and forth in a corner muttering gibberish.

  • What’s Cooking?

    One of my many happy things about being back in the Los Angeles area, is the food. I missed the restaurants, but I also missed the produce and the ethnic markets fiercely.

    Lately I’ve been enjoying garden bounty: Squash from one person with an overflowing garden. Lemons from another with heavy trees. Tomatoes from a friend who is growing more than her household will eat.

    It is such a wonderful thing. Because it is fresh, the flavor and nutritional values are higher. Because it is free, the financial benefit is awesome. Because it is what is available right then, it forces me to think of ways to make use of them, which often leads to meals I wouldn’t normally think to shop for.

    Most of all, for me, food is so much about caring. When the ingredients are gifted to me through my network of human connections and interactions, it ties me to the positive. As I cook, I think of where ingredients came from. I think of whom they are going to feed. I think about ingredients loved by people I love. I think of the last time I prepared a dish, and who I fed that time, or of whom I would like to feed with it. I follow the threads in my mind as I chop and mix and sample.

    Onions and cucumbers came from the CSA last week, and my daughter requested a cucumber salad. As I prepared it I thought back two summers to being in New York City, when a different CSA delivery led to a different cucumber salad. It was prepared by a dear friend as we worked together in the kitchen to create a feast from CSA items and food treasures collected at a nearby market. I know this is part of why my daughter wanted the salad too, because of her memory of that NYC salad, and because the friend was extra on our mind because she had a birthday this week. Every future cucumber salad will always remind both of us, of that one, and no other will ever be quite as good, because some food moments are so right.

    With my bounty of tomatoes I made gazpacho, which is pretty much a perfect summer treat. It makes some use of the lemons as well. Lemons can be used pretty much daily in cooking, especially during the summer, which is the perfect time for multiple salads. Anything to stay cooler.

    I’ve been cooking on the grill a lot lately, even things I wouldn’t normally cook on the grill (like banana bread). This is because it is fuck-all hot and I don’t want to heat the kitchen up further. The rest of the tomatoes I slow cooked into a delicious tomato sauce using the grill. I suppose all this unattended cooking out there could eventually lead to my house burning down, but whatever, in Southern California I can survive without housing longer than I can survive without food.

    Half of the tomato sauce is in the freezer waiting for another use. The other half, I simmered ground and seasoned lamb patties in. Those I served over portabella mushrooms, stuffed with a mixture of spinach, goat cheese, extra garlic, basil, and pine nuts (and cooked on the grill, of course). The abundance of squash has been sliced up, lightly salted, spritzed with ACV and grilled. Everything gets grilled.

    The heat has been leading to a desire for cooler and more refreshing cocktails as well. I brought home mint the other day so the bartender could make me mojitos. The peels from the cucumbers for the cucumber salad, I used to flavor vodka overnight, along with mint sprigs. Then that made cucumber mint spritzers the next night.

    The heat wave finally broke yesterday, after a week of evil yellow ball in the sky trying to kill us all weather. It is still summer though. It will still be a grilled dinner tonight with refreshing cold side dishes and beverages, just with less lethargy and overheated misery.

  • Not All It’s Cracked Up to Be

    We went to Bed Bath & Beyond yesterday, and walked past a display of Eggies. I paused and looked at them, because I get so frustrated peeliIng eggs.

    I was deeply suspicious.

    I didn’t buy any, but I did use Google to learn more.

  • Random Chatter About Today

    Today was good. Indy continued on her road to recovery, so the weight on my shoulders from yesterday, eased. It was kind of a rough night, and I will probably be spending a second night downstairs, but, really, things are MUCH better. Still, rough night equals not enough sleep, which is just no fun.

    Watson’s playdate got canceled, but I was able to get somebody else to bring a good natured Golden over for a romp on the deck. She was a little too good natured, and she didn’t do enough reprimanding of Watson being a booger, but still it was a fun evening, and included sharing a bottle of wine with her owner. Plus, the Golden got Indy extra alert and best of all created a bunch of wagging, which had been missing since surgery.

    Red fox sighting today! So cute. I’ve seen foxes a couple of times before in the area, but today was the first daylight one. Actually, my mother saw a fox while walking Watson today, and then we all saw one from the back deck. I don’t know if it was the same fox, but it seems likely. It’s about the right time for kits. I wonder if there is a den nearby, filled with cuteness.

    Lamb burgers with feta cheese for dinner. Lamb is good food. Perhaps I could lure a fox with some of it.

    I also have some fresh strawberries in the house and have been experimenting making whipped cream with liqueurs. Last night was Disaronno and tonight was Grand Marnier. This also led me to thinking I was to try making a Limoncello ice cream this summer.

    Thunderstorm tonight, time to find out how Watson feels about thunder. Hopefully he’ll be as easy going about it as all my other dogs have been.

  • Trendy Tilapia

    Tilapia has become quite the trendy fish lately. I see it on more and more restaurant menus. I hear people talking about eating it. I see it in “regular” (i.e. middle class) grocery stores at prices far above what it used to sell for.

    I have never eaten it, and don’t have any desire to. I’m not saying I won’t ever eat it, but I certainly won’t be making the choice to order or buy it myself. This is fairly odd, because I am generally an adventurous eater who is up for trying almost anything once.

    Tilapia used to be a “trash” fish, very cheap and found in markets in lower income neighborhoods, and I never saw it on restaurant menus. Now, that isn’t what I have against it. Lobster used to be a trash fish too, and I quite enjoy lobster.

    I feed my own dogs (never the fosters) a raw food diet. Now London was kind of known for eating anything and everything. He never want off his feed for little illnesses, he has only ever turned down food when he was literally dying. He also ate a door, a remote, a box of tampons (including the box, but carefully removing the wrappers), a Costco sized bottle of Liquid Advil, and the list goes on.

    Because a lot of what is great to feed dogs are odd cuts of meat that don’t often make it to the typical middle class white bread American table, I often shopped at ethnic markets or markets in poorer areas in order to find things like chicken feet, and lamb heart and the like. I like to give the dogs fish, especially being a husky and a husky mix, which as originally bred consume a lot of fish for protein source, but I don’t feed it all the time because of the expense. The dogs always looked on it as a special treat, and London was especially fond of salmon.

    Then one day I spotted tilapia in the market. It was below my protein price point for dog food, and I quickly bought a package to take home to the dogs.

    I prepped their food bowls that night and plopped them down and both dogs dug in.

    Then both dogs spit out the tilapia and stared at me, “What the fuck is this shit?”  No amount of coaxing or refusing to offer them anything else would convince them to eat it. They carefully ate all the other things around it, and left behind the tilapia in disgust.  They think cat turds covered in kitty litter is the best treat ever, and they outright refused to eat tilapia.

    So yeah, whenever I see it on a menu, or hear people talking about making it, I always just think of it as the one thing that London totally refused to eat.

    It just isn’t appealing to me.

  • Substantial Dissatisfaction

    Tonight we had a “get to know you” potluck at an acting program the kid is considering joining.

    There is good luck and bad luck, but for some of the worst kind of luck is potluck.

    I hate it. I just do.

    When I go to a potluck event, I plan to eat either before or after, depending on the time of day. I bring something that I am sure I am willing to eat, and that is unlikely to spoil, no matter how annoyingly they’ve set up the table or the timing of the event. Then I pretend I am eating while there, while occasionally actually consuming a little of the thing I brought.

    So, we got invited to this event – evited, actually. They requested that in the comments section of the RSVP we say what we will be bringing. I took a quick look at the other items people were bringing.

    Brownies
    Chips and cheese dip
    Snickers Salad!!! *
    Tuna sandwiches

    … wait – Snickers Salad?
    So, I googled because WTF? but they were excited about it.

    I read recipes, and I was like
    OMFG WHUT? NO!

    (recipes varied, but basically, chopped Snickers candy bars, fruit and Cool Whip)

    *shudder*

    And then, I blocked it out.

    But, when I was there tonight, I heard people talking. They were so excited that somebody brought Snickers Salad.

    And I try to have an open minded policy about trying new food.

    Since I wasn’t planning to ever make it, I decided I should try it, since there it was, conveniently on the table.

    Just in case I was wrong.

    Snickers, apples, Cool Whip, something I couldn’t identify, somebody else mentioned Nilla Wafers…

    The kid found a grape in hers. She announced, “I found a grape.” It sounded neutral and polite, if you didn’t know her, but to my ears it sounded a lot like, “I found a booger, in a pile of gross.”

    My food horizons have been expanded. I resent this expansion. I probably should have stuck to my pretend to eat policy.

    * Yes, the !!! was part of the comment about what they were bringing

  • I haven’t made many food posts lately

    I have been cooking lately, but it hasn’t been particularly fulfilling.

    I’m glad to eat at home more often than we eat out, because it is better for us where both our budget and our health is concerned.

    However, a lot of the enjoyment I usually get from cooking has been missing. My kitchen is not at all what I would like. I still haven’t gotten the hang of the stove. It doesn’t heat evenly and just isn’t very consistent.

    I did get a convection oven set up on the counter, which has helped a bit, but it doesn’t work as well as I had hoped. It does work better than the main oven, and having two helps. Two good ones would be better. I haven’t found my oven thermometer yet. I might just have to buy a new one. That way I can figure out just how off things are.

    On top of the kitchen issues, I am still really bothered by how much more expensive grocery shopping tends to be here. It makes the shopping stressful for me and that hangs around as I work with the ingredients while cooking.

    Still, slowly, I’ve had some meals that turned out okay.

    Last night we had company for dinner. I invited over the woman who is going to house and pet sit for us, and showed her around the house, let her meet the animals and bribed her with food and drinks. I made some spicy mango margaritas, which were very tasty, but I also broke my blender, which was really annoying. I had to make the drinks in the food processor, which made a bit of a mess.

    I made salad, green beans, cauliflower and butternut squash pureed with goat cheese. For protein, I went with a surf and turf, rosemary boneless beef short ribs and bacon wrapped scallops. Before wrapping the scallops, I coated the bacon in garlic powder and paprika.

    bacon-wrapped scallops.

    Today we got our first CSA delivery.

    Overwintered parsnips
    Red Sunchokes
    Ramps
    Sorrel
    Overwintered Spinach
    Rhubarb
    Burdock
    Chives
    Black Radish
    Decorative Willow

    Tonight I cooked a quinoa pilaf with ramps, parsnips and green beans. I hadn’t used all the scallops I bought yesterday, so I seared them in butter, olive oil and chili oil, and served those atop sauteed spinach.

    Spicy Seared Scallops and Quinoa Pilaf

    I’d like to feel better about cooking again, and get more joy out of it. It is one of the bright spots in my life, so I am working to find a way to really make it work for me again.

    Now it is time for my midnight dog walk.

  • on the way home from the airport

    Kid: Oh my god, what… Ugh. That smells.
    Me: It’s my suitcase.
    Him: What?
    Me: It’s cheese.
    Him: You have smelly cheese in your suitcase?
    Me: It’s good cheese.
    Him: So?
    Me: It is a bit stinky.
    Him: I’ll say.
    Me: It’s really good cheese. It’s ridiculously expensive and I haven’t found it in Minnesota, and to order it and ship it is even more expensive.
    Him: So you put it in your suitcase?
    Me: Yes, I know, all my clothes are fucked. I need to wash everything.
    Kid: It stinks.
    Me: It IS a smelly cheese, but it is SO good.
    Him: You stunk up the plane?!
    Me: Yes, it kind of did. It’s really good cheese.
    Him: People probably thought it was you. They thought you were farty.
    Me: No, the suitcase was over somebody else’s head.
    Kid: It smells like dog poop.
    Me: It’s my favorite cheese. It’s really good.
    Kid: It smells like a dog came in here and pooed all over!
    Me: IT’S GOOD CHEESE!!!
    Him: You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
    Me: Shut up!
    Kid: Inconceivable.

    Brought to you by Cowgirl Creamery Red Hawk and my not entirely loving family.

  • Volcano Lunch

    My birthday is next week and a friend of mine took me out for a mani/pedi and lunch yesterday as my gift. The mani/pedi went without incident. We sat next to each other in the massager chairs and tried to converse while people tickled our feet and manhandled us.

    For lunch we went to a sushi place that neither of us had been to before. Some people, especially when treating a friend to a birthday meal, might prefer to go with something “tried and true” but both of us enjoy checking out new restaurants in hopes of finding a new gem.

    This sushi place was chosen based on the fact it was very close to the nail salon and a couple of HER friends eat there regularly and like it.

    We arrived and were given a choice of sushi bar or table. I almost always prefer the bar, however it had been more than a month since the last time my friend and I had seen each other or really spoken. A lot had gone on in that month and we had things to talk about. Some of what I wanted to tell her about, I did not want people to overhear. We chose the table.

    They brought us menus and the sushi ordering form. We carefully opened the menus with our newly manicured and not really dry nails. The menu was the type that is filled to the brim with specialty rolls, a great many of them in combinations that have little thought put into them. Each roll was listed by number, name, ingredients, photo and price. It was a full color menu. It makes for a very crowded design, but gives you a decent idea of what you are ordering. We discussed our order and as we settled on what we wanted the waitress came by to check on us. We told her we had decided, but had not marked the sheet yet. She said she would do it for us.

    We ordered. We ordered by number, name, and pointing at the item on the menu. Triple specificity.

    #8 Crazy Boy
    #10 BSCR
    #11 Volcano Scallop
    #24 House Special
    #26 Sexy Roll
    #39 Sashimi Salad

    The waitress went to give our order to the sushi chef and we started to go over some of the topics we needed to cover.

    Before long the waitress reappeared announcing “Sexy Roll,” and placed it on the table. The overall presentation was not the same as in the photo, but I am fine with that. Each chef has a slightly different style for things and I do not expect plastic food that looks exactly the same. We dug in. It tasted good. We continued to talk.

    We were not finished with that roll when the waitress reappeared carrying two more items. “Crazy Boy,” she tells us. She pauses stressed because she is not sure where to put both plates down. Mind you, we are two people sitting at a 4 top and only have one item on the table so far, but it is apparently exactly where she wanted to put the other plates. I move what is left of the Sexy Roll and she puts down the Crazy Boy and the Sashimi Salad. She does not tell us the name of the Sashimi Salad since she had gotten distracted by the placement problem. I could easily tell what it was, because there was lettuce involved and there was nothing roll like involved in it, and everything else we ordered was a roll.

    Crazy Boy looked similar to the photo. Sashimi Salad did not. Again, I am not overly concerned with the look matching the photo, but when that difference in looks is caused by a change in ingredients, I am less excited. The Sashimi Salad in the photo has hunks of fresh fish, atop mixed greens with a non-creamy salad dressing. The mixed greens on our plate did have an oil and vinegar dressing on them, but the fish itself was tossed and slathered in creamy sauce. Had that information been on the menu in some form, I would have told them to leave it off. I made a mental note to be sure to alter the order if I ever came again. I was in no mood to complain, and just wanted to get back to our chat. I didn’t eat any of the Crazy Boy, but my friend liked it.

    A different waitress brought two more plates, announcing, “Scallop Roll and Lobster Roll,” as we made room for them on the table. My friend and I exchange looks and stare at the plates. (Huh?)

    I stopped her, “I’m sorry, I don’t think we ordered a Lobster Roll, and this Scallop Roll, is it the BSCR, or the Volcano?”

    “It’s the Volcano,” she informs us. “You ordered the Lobster Roll, right?”

    “No, I don’t think so.” (No, I definitely did not order the Lobster Roll. Nothing we said SOUNDS like Lobster Roll.)

    She goes to get the waitress who took our order and they consult the piece of paper and come over to the table.

    The waitress we ordered from says, “You don’t want it?”

    “Well, we didn’t order it.”

    “Sorry,” she tells us as the other waitress takes it and gives it back to the chef.

    I point to the roll on the table and inquire, “Is this the Volcano Roll?” I am asking again because it does not look like what I was expecting.

    “No,” she tells me, “it is the BSCR.”

    “Okay, the other lady said it was the Volcano. So the Volcano is still coming?” I ask.

    She looks at me confused, “You want the Volcano?” My friend and I exchange looks. (What’s happening?)

    “Yes, we ordered it, right?” The waitress looks at the piece of paper and nods and walks back to talk to the chef. My friend and I start up our conversation again expecting the rest of our order soon, but we only get a few words in before the other waitress interrupts again.

    “Do you want the Volcano?” she asks. My friend and I look at each other again. (Obviously somebody is confused. Is it us?)

    “Yes, that’s the spicy one, right?. We like spicy things.” I tell her.

    “Oh, you like the spicy sauce?”

    “Yes.” I smile at her encouragingly. She goes away and talks to the chef again and we get back to our conversation.

    In a flash, she returns. “You want the Volcano Roll too?” My friend and I exchange looks again. o.O

    “Right, we still have two more rolls coming, right? How many rolls did we order?”

    She looks at the paper, “Six. So you’re okay? You want 2 more?”

    “We’ve had four so far, right?” I say, trying to get us all on the same page. She nods. “So you are bringing two more? We still need the Volcano Roll and the House Roll?” At this point everything seems questionable.

    “Okay.” She goes back to talk to the chef again, and once again we try to get back to our conversation.

    She brings us a roll that looks ABSOLUTELY NOTHING like any of the photos of what we ordered, not even close. “House Roll,” she announces and sets it on the table. The House Roll on the menu was a roll completely covered with three kinds of chopped up raw fish GOODness. This thing was a small, very plain roll with two types of fish, all wrapped inside. My friend and I look at each other. (WTF?)

    “Can I see what we ordered?” I gesture toward the paper. She hands me the paper.

    I look over the checked boxes.

    #8 Crazy Boy
    #10 House Roll
    #11 BSCR…

    What? These numbers do not match up with the menu numbers. Also the prices on this piece of paper are all considerably higher. For instance this #10 House Roll is $9.75 instead of $7.75.

    I look down the rest of the sheet and see a mark by #26 Sexy Roll. #24 is not called the House Roll and is not marked. Written at the bottom in a box is Volcano Roll and Sashimi Salad.

    “Oh, House Roll on the menu is number 24, and this looks different,” I mention.

    The waitress nods happily, “We changed it, but I checked the right name.” I smile at her. She smiles back. “The BSCR and the Volcano Roll are the same,” she tells me. My smile fades.

    “What? They are not the same on the menu.” I point out.

    “Just two different names. They are the same. See, BSCR is short for it. B. S. C. R. It is the initials,” she explains cheerfully to me. “See? That’s why the chef is confused.”

    My friend and I look at each other again. (B S C R is short for for Volcano Roll, yes, it all makes perfect sense now.)

    “But they are different on the menu, the Volcano Roll is spicy. Also, the House Roll is different on the menu.”

    “Yes,” she agrees. “They have changed it. They have the wrong picture. We keep trying to tell them to change the menu.”

    The chef speaks now, “See? The Volcano Roll and Scallop Roll are the same.”

    “But, on the menu they are different.” I reply. I am not trying to be argumentative. I am speaking in a polite tone of voice and am genuinely feeling confused, sort of as if I have wandered into The Twilight Zone.

    “No,” he tells me.

    “No?” I ask.

    He motions at the waitress to bring him the menu. He looks at the menu. “See? It is the same. The BSCR has scallops, and the Volcano has scallops and lobster and spicy sauce. They are the same,” he states firmly.

    (Perhaps we do not have matching definitions of the word same. ) “Oh. Okay.” I tell him. (I don’t want to talk to you anymore.)

    “I can make it for you.”

    I glance at my friend and raise and eyebrow. Her answer is written on her face, as clearly as if she had used a Sharpie (OMFG Let’s just Get. Out. Of. Here.)

    “No thank you. I think we’ll be fine.” I tell the chef.

    “No, I can make it for you.”

    “No, it’s okay,” my friend tells him.

    “Are you sure?”

    “Yes. We’re fine. We’ll be fine with what we have. Thank you.” I respond.

    “What about the other one? You don’t like the other one?”

    “It’s fine.”

    He says something I can’t hear to the waitress and she shows him on the menu. He gestures toward our table. “Bring it here, I can make it like that.”

    “It’s okay. We’re fine, really.” (We just want to finish and go far away now.)

    They drop it and we try to go back to our conversation.

    A loud voice interrupts, “What’s wrong?”

    We look and another man has come out from the kitchen and is staring angrily at us.

    “Nothing, we’re fine. Just some confusion with the menu.”

    “What’s wrong?”

    “We’re fine now, everything is…”

    He cuts me off, “What’s wrong?!”

    The waitress steps in and starts talking to him. I cannot hear what she is saying, but he is sufficiently distracted.

    We go back to lunching and talking, but soon my friend interrupts me and says, “I think they are talking about us.” I glance back at the sushi bar. Both men have angry faces and are waving their hands around. The women are standing there looking uncomfortable. The men get louder and louder. Soon the men are yelling at each other. They are yelling loudly. They are yelling about us. The man from the kitchen yells at the man who made our food. This pisses our chef off and he begins to yell back about some other customer who was there earlier. They get louder and louder, and more and more angry. The women start arguing also, but not as loudly. I cannot make out what the women are saying. All four of them are just standing up at the bar arguing while we try to eat our lunch.

    Eventually the man who had been in the kitchen storms back into the kitchen in disgust. The other man begins to clean up his workspace with a vengeance, slamming and banging things. The waitress comes over to ask if we want anything else.

    My friend smiled, “Just our check, and a to go box, thank you.”

    My friend scooped into boxes, paid, and we left as quickly as possible. As we walked out the door the waitress called out, “Thank you! Come again!”