Sushi: the Sparkling vs Sake debate

Last night Mr. Lush and I had sushi with our good friend, Mrs. Luce at Tachibana's. Tachibana's, although they have sub-par service, has great sushi. Although, honestly, they are not my absolute favorite in the city, its really because of my love affair with The Spicy Roll, which Tachi's is not the best at. Although we did finally find one spicy roll we liked there-the Arrowhead. It happens to be $13, but its really good and the rest of the menu is on the cheaper side. (ie $3.50 for a salmon/avocado roll). The Arrowhead may not be as "authentic" as other rolls, but I always say I prefer Americanized versions of ethnicity anyway.

But I digress. Anyway, Mr. Lush and I typically have sake when we eat sushi by ourselves but much to our delight, Mrs. Luce rather enjoys sparkling with it and brings it to our sushi pairings. Much to our dis-light (is that a word? It should be) Mr. Luce is allergic to sushi, so our sparkling and sushi dinners with the Luce Family are rare and are only when Mr. Luce is out of town. But that makes them rather special and should be celebrated.

The question this begs to ask, is which do Mr. Lush and I prefer with sushi? Sake or sparkling? Sometimes when we are at home, and get sushi to go, if we happen to have a bottle of sparkling we will drink it, but we never bring it with us. The truth is Mr. Lush and I eat sushi about once a week, and Mr. Lush isn't a big of a fan of sparkling as I am, and although he indulges me now and again, sparkling once a week is a lot for someone who doesn't love it.

We have tried nicer sake quite a few times. Seki in The Loop has a decent sake menu in which they list things based on how sweet / dry /etc they are AND let you have a sampler with 3 of them. Of course, I know nicer sake exists in other places, but no one else gives you the handy dandy menu or lets you try 3. We played around with that for a bit and have tried other places as well. But, alas, we just don't like it that much more than hot sake. There's something nice, almost right, about hot sake and sushi to me. And, since its anywhere between 40-400% cheaper than nice cold sake, we'll stick with that. It almost justifies our once a week sushi habit-look at what we're saving by having cheap hot sake instead of nice cold sake???

I was fortunate enough to have Cristal once with sushi...now that I would force Mr. Lush to deal with once a week, should a gross dozen cases of Cristal land on our porch. Since I don't see that happening, I guess we'll continue to have sparkling with Mrs. Luce and sake by ourselves.

Thanks Mrs. Luce-for the company and the sparkling!

Parrotheads = experience, not just a concert

I’m not really a Jimmy Buffet fan…but who doesn’t like a couple of his songs, at least? Plus, its only in the US that a beach bum could end up being a multimillionaire, right?? And Mr. Buffet deserves a tip of the cap for making that happen.
Well, Mr. Lush and I, along with a couple of friends, went to the Jimmy Buffet concert last night. Recap- completely sold out show, both in seats and lawn. Took us at least 1 ½ hours to get there because of the traffic-and it would normally be a 15 minute drive. Music – fine. Overall experience-weird. Imagine the percentage of people who go to sporting event and wear that team’s attire. Now that same percentage of people were wearing some combination, if not all of the following: Hawaiian shirt, grass skirt, and parrots on their hat or even AS their hat. Really. The entire crowd wore that kind of stuff. (us included-but just the Hawaiian shirts) A sold out crowd of middle aged people wearing grass skirts and parrots on their heads made the night an experience, not just a concert. I’d recommend it to anyone, though, just once. It wasn’t on The List, but I think I’ll add so I can cross it off. :)

Bamboo makes good fajitas?

The other night we lit the fire pit that our good friend Mr. Luce made for us out of scrap metal at work (what a handy friend to have) and sat around and drank some wine. It was lovely. Well, then Mr. Lush decided to put some dried bamboo on the fire. Why do we have bamboo you ask? Our neighbors planted bamboo a few years ago and it of course has spread to our yard. For those of you that don't know, bamboo is harder to kill than a bad 80's haircut. The roots grow 4 + feet underground and have a lot to live for I guess because there just ain't no killin them. Occasionally Mr. Lush trims it and it has sort of become like privacy foliage. Well, said trimmed pieces became the dried bamboo we burned. Anyway, I digress.....

Bamboo flares up and burns quickly and smells like.....cumin. It took me a minute to put my finger on it, but it really does. I'm thinking of maybe throwing some on next time we're grilling chicken and maybe make fajitas! I don't know if it will work, but its funny to think about....