Sushi, or Not Sushi

subtitled: Waiter, There's a Fruit Fly in My Soy Sauce

Saturday was a busy day. I had a successful sock club in the morning and a small fuzzy feet class in the afternoon. The weather in southwestern Ohio hasn't been conducive to people wanting to knit heavy, warm slippers lately. Nevertheless, these classes gave me a good excuse to sit and knit all day.

After the store closed, Dani and I went out for sushi. We had talked about it a couple months ago, and since I don't have much if any real experience with sushi, Dani told me she would go with me and help me figure out what to try. We went to Soho Japanese Bistro and had a great time. You'll be proud of me. I was very brave.

We asked the waiter for his recommendation, and he naturally pointed to the most expensive item on the list we were perusing. His suggestion turned out to be my favorite of the night, though, so I can't complain too much. Here's what our first plate looked like:

On the left is a California Roll, which is crab, cucumber, and avocado wrapped in seaweed and surrounded by rice. That's a fairly common roll. Even I had heard of that one before. On the right is our waiter's suggestion: The Angry Dragon! Oooh! Doesn't he look angry? I thought he looked kind of cute. His eyes are fish eggs. Dani and I both tried one. Not bad... kinda squishy. The rest of him was shrimp tempura and cucumber wrapped in seaweed and covered with rice, avocado, eel, spicy mayo, and eel sauce (which is more like a teriyaki sauce than the eel "goo" the name made me think of). Like I said, this was my favorite roll of the night. The green lump on the back of the plate is wasabi. Very hot. Clears up any sinus infection in a matter of seconds. The pinkish lump on the back of the plate is pickled ginger. Surprisingly tasty. Dani says it's good to use that to cleanse your palate between rolls.

Here's our second plate. In the front is Spider, a deep-fried soft shell crab with cucumber, avocado, spicy mayo, and eel sauce wrapped in seaweed. He was very yummy, too. Behind him is the Philly, which was raw salmon, cream cheese, and avocado wrapped in seaweed and surrounded by rice. This was the only actual raw fish that we had, and I have to admit it was probably my least favorite roll, mostly due to the texture. That's a lot of squishy stuff to have together inside that seaweed. I did eat two pieces (one hello bite, one good-bye bite) to make sure I gave it a fair try.

I would definitely go back.

Instead of going our seperate ways after we finished dinner, we decided to go to Perkins for coffee and knitting. We both had sad little pieces of pie, and ended up staying for over four hours talking, knitting, and laughing. For a good amount of time, we were the only ones in the restaurant besides the workers.

Oh, did you want to see what I worked on all day yesterday?

This is the Uptown Boot Sock pattern from an old Interweave Knits. I'm using Lorna's Laces that was Kool-Aid dyed for me by my BFF Wendy. I love these colors, and I love the way the subtle cable pattern looks without ruining the effect of the variegation. I'm using size 2 dpns, of course, and these socks will be for me. I worked on these a little bit yesterday.

This is the first of the Maggie Valentine's Day socks. I started this Saturday morning during sock club. I'd say that's a bit of progress for one day. It's just an easy kids sock pattern in Cascade Fixation yarn. I haven't used this yarn before... it's 98.3% cotton and 1.7% elastic, which makes for some soft and stretchy yarn. It seems to make pretty sturdy fabric (bet you'll never guess which size needles I'm using), and hopefully will last a while since they'll stretch to fit.

I also started a silly fuzzy foot during that class, and played with it for a while. I'll not post pictures, because I was only playing, and it's silly. And I probably won't finish it. We'll see.