The Nordic Warrior Queen and I had a problem.
One day she complained to me (quite vehemently, I might add) that when we go out to eat, I always get to pick the restaurant.
That, and my choice of restaurant is generally predicated on the beer selection at said restaurant. She implied that I might have a priority problem.
Of course I denied all this. Ridiculous.
However, being a considerate person, I assured her that I’ll do whatever makes her happy; in other words, I’ll compromise.
Our agreement was as follows: if she has to accompany me to my favorite pub on Saturday afternoons, then first I have to buy her lunch wherever she wants. That’s the deal, despite the fact that beer drinking is far more difficult after a big meal.
So you can see now the extent to which I work towards my wife’s happiness.
Since then, I’ve learned she has a sushi problem. It’s not a Betty Ford Clinic sort of problem, but still, nine meals out of ten are sushi. What’s up with that?
And she said I have a priority problem.
It’s been working out pretty well though. Most weekends, we wrap up our errand running – Costco, Best Buy, Target, Safeway, Home Depot – with a couple of spicy tuna rolls, or maybe some sashimi and a Vegas roll. And after that, we head over to the pub and belly up to the bar for a few beers.
Marriage is all about compromise.
We enjoy watching the sushi chefs at work. They turn one of life’s big mysteries – sushi-making – into the simplest of events. Grab, pat, fill, wrap, roll, slice, arrange, dress and serve. Easy.
And all those ingredients; the shiny blocks of raw tuna and whitefish, the jiggling mounds of squid and eel and octopus, the big tub of sticky rice, the sheets of roasted seaweed and sliced vegetables, the tempura and edamame and miso soup.
It’s art.
So we decided to try it at home. We figured it’d be cheaper as well. But how? I have no Kung Fu skills.
The biggest question was where to get the fish. And the special rice. And the seaweed. We had no idea. Despairing, we went to our favorite sushi restaurant, to see if we could observe clues to these difficult questions.
As it turned out, all we had to do was ask.
Like a teenage boy trying to purchase his first set of condoms or bag of pot, we asked a few vague questions about where we could find some sushi-grade fish. Finally he caught on.
“Oh, you want to buy some tuna?” Once the ice was broken, he set us up with all the “good stuff” we would ever need.
“Come back in fifteen minutes and I’ll have it all wrapped up for you.” It was like some sort of black market transaction.
We picked up our high-grade tuna, and on the way home, stopped at a specialty grocery store to buy a big bag of short grain rice, some Japanese mayonnaise, rice vinegar, crab sticks, fresh shrimp, avocado, cucumber, gleaming sheets of seaweed, pickled ginger, and a neat little can of wasabi mustard.
Another store, and we had chopsticks, rolling mats, dipping bowls, and of course we had to have special square plates and placemats and a big white sushi serving platter. We were all set.
All that, and it only cost $150.