About Seafood

Well, it’s 12:38pm Hawaiian time, and I’ve been up since 3am. So I think that puts my bedtime right at about 6pm. Today I had so much to do toward getting caught up with my long-lost island life that I didn’t even fight my early morning jetlag. I welcomed it and got to work going through mail, unpacking, starting laundry, etc. – eliciting hostile comments from sleepy husband the whole while. Sorry, but I had overdue Christmas decorations to get up ASAP!

Lat night when I arrived after my 13 hour journey home from Washington, DC we got a quick and refreshing sushi dinner before immediately going to bed. Raw fish and rice is the perfect post-plane meal, especially when jetlag is involved and you can’t quite tell if you’re hungry or not. In my case, I was ravenous without a doubt, hence the sea of assorted sushi.

I am world-renowned for my ability to get dangerously lost
when driving, but my condition has been in check for the past few years thanks
to GPS. Unfortunately, yesterday I had a
relapse on the way to a Junior Club meeting in Honolulu when I made the fatal error of
inputting the wrong address. Worst of
all, I dragged my sweet friend down with me.
She sacrificed getting in to the meeting on time for directing me via
cell phone to where I needed to be. Half
an hour later I was still lost and we both decided it’d be best if I pulled
over while she came to get me. The
meeting was nearly over at this point. So
I made it up to my friend in the only way I know how by buying her an early dinner
at my favorite sushi
restaurant, which was serendipitously right by the spot where I pulled
over. Because it was an impromptu meal,
I didn’t have my camera on hand, but you’ve
seen what Sushi Sasabune has to offer.
Absolute heaven on a plate.

Once
I got home, I still had all the ingredients for the potato gnocchi with shrimp and peas I planned to make. Since Lloyd hadn’t eaten I whipped it up and
ended up eating a small plate myself as a late night snack. The creamy peas and dumplings were a nice
contrast to the firm shrimp. I also
tossed in a few sliced mushrooms (leftover from pizza night), which were a
welcome addition.

Tonight
is our first night of photography class.
The goal is to understand our new camera. Or at least understand how not to break it, which
I’ve done multiple times now and could only fix by completely resetting it. Right after class, we’re headed to the
airport for California
wedding weekend number two!

If you’ve ever poked around the internet in search of Sushi sites you may have come across http://www.sustainablesushi.net/ . Sounds innocuous enough-a sushi lover helping other sushi lovers chose their favorites wisely, right?

Wrong.

This site is basically a Greenpeace front whose latest post reeks of a failed Greenpeace fundraising campaign that sought to disparage Alaska pollock and raise money off of completely scientifically refuted claims that the fish stock was collapsing.

Despite claims that the author is “not a fan of direct confrontation” and frequent references to “Greenpeace activists” there’s no mention, even in the About The Author section of the site, that Casson Trenor is himself a Greenpeace activist, identified by the group as “Greenpeace’s Senior Markets Campaigner.”

The author is a campaigner who apparently has decided to work Greenpeace’s botched, distortion-filled, Alaska pollock-based fundraising campaign into his recommendations.

He can’t avoid the fact that other green groups like Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch program calls Alaska pollock a “Best Choice” or that the fishery is MSC-certified, so he acknowledges that before dismissing it and concluding, with an ominous Greenpeace-tinged tone that things, “seem to suggest that all may not be well in pollock country.”

Rest assured all is well in pollock country– regardless of what SustainbleSushi.net, a new resident of distortionville, says.

We had a busy weekend that involved our favorite restaurant on Friday (Sushi Sasabune)…

…an attempt to surf (underscore, attempt) on Saturday…

…and lots of errand running on Sunday. Included in the errands was a big grocery shop, made easier by two new tools I’ve recently implemented that I have to share. One, which I picked up from other food blogs, is Menu Plan Monday. Which I’ll call Supper Plan Sunday, because it works better for me to knock this out on Sundays and only plan suppers. Lunches around here are either leftovers or too simple to plan for. Here’s this week’s Supper Plan Sunday.

Tonight’s meal is unusually elaborate. A few girlfriends of mine have started a rotating Monday night dinner party, and it is my turn to host. I thought I’d try Indian food, because I have a habit of trying something new for company. Not really a habit I’d recommend. But hopefully everything will turn out at least edible. I made the dessert bars last evening, so if all else fails, we have those. Also, you’ll notice that once a week the hubs is in charge. So far he’s consistently alternated between ground turkey sloppy Joes and steak.

The second tool is tadalist.com. I signed up a few weeks ago, and it’s proven wildly useful. We have a few types of lists – to-dos, restaurants to try, books to read – but groceries is one of the most functional because Lloyd and I can independently access it whenever we want. If he’s at work and thinks of something he needs, he can quickly log in and add it. Or if I need him to run to the grocery store on base after work, he can easily bring up the list electronically. For menu planning, it’s a breeze because I simply bring up the recipe in one tab, bring up our grocery list in the other, and transfer any ingredients we don’t have from the former to the later. All paper free. There are other list makers out there with more bells and whistles, but I love the minimalism of Tada-List.

This week actor Jeremy Piven takes his “I got mercury poisoning from eating too much fish and had to bail out of your play” argument before an arbiter as the play’s producers seek money from the hard-partying star.

Apparently we haven’t heard the usual whining and distorting associated with this silly case because the New York Post reports “everybody’s under a gag order.”

But as they say silence can be deadly and if the Post is right “the producers… are launching a sharper, more aggressive assault” against Piven and his claims this time around.

Whatever happens watchers of the Great White Way say, “he won’t work on Broadway again.”

Who would have ever thought that my trip back to Washington, DC this week
for work would require more summery clothes than I am used to wearing in Hawaii? It is smoking hot and sunny in the city and I’m
loving it while it lasts. Thunderstorms
are expected started Wednesday through Saturday when I leave. But sunshine awaits me back in Hawaii!

So speaking of Hawaii, I
spent Wednesday hurrying around before my trip, and grabbed a sandwich on the
go from my favorite little deli in Kailua,
the Uahi Island Grill. If you recall, this is one of the first
places Lloyd and I happened upon when we moved to Oahu. I normally like to try as many things on the menu
as possible, but had to return to the smoky, savory smoked fish sandwich on a
chewy baguette. I ate half for lunch and
the other half for an afternoon snack.

I boarded my flight Wednesday night and slept (I use the
term loosely) all night. When I woke up,
it was 6:30am in Las Vegas,
and time to celebrate my fabulous little sister’s 21^st birthday. Here we are all dolled up.

For her birthday dinner we went to Little Buddha in the Palms. It was very tasty, though Sushi
Sasabune in Honolulu
is still number one. We shared two unique
rolls and a sashimi sampler.

Finally, this isn’t my fish meal, but I had to share it
because it looked so delicious (and was, I had a bite). My little sister’s boyfriend, Chris (also a
diehard fish lover) ordered from Bobby
Flay’s Mesa Grill on Friday night.
It was cornmeal-crusted bass with olives, jalapeos, and cherry tomatoes.

Now I’m further east in Washington, DC
and am looking forward to the third Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee meeting
on Wednesday and Thursday. More details
to come..

My dear college friend, Stephanie, was visiting from Texas the last several
days, and we had a ball.

We took a surf
lesson…

and swam in a cage surrounded by wild sharks…

but maybe the most memorable adventure was dinner at Sushi
Sasabune.

Called “soup Nazi-style sushi,” this small restaurant in Honolulu is known for real
sushi, eaten the real way…only. When I
made our reservation, I was informed there would be no rolls or tempura to be
had, and if we sat at the sushi bar, there would also be no menus. The incredibly talented sushi chef picks for
you – called omakase-style – until you get full and tell him to stop. Here are the four plates I ate before raising
the white flag. I’ve eaten a lot of
sushi, and this was the best of my life.

In addition to choosing and explaining what you eat, the
chef explains exactly how to eat it – “one bite please” and “soy sauce ok” or “no
soy sauce please.” This is where the
Nazi reference comes in (I did get reprimanded once for trying to bite a piece
of nigiri in half), but in reality, the eating tips were much appreciated. Some pieces of fish already have sauce on
them, and dousing them in soy sauce ruins the flavor balance, but for many of
us is just a habit. It sounds a little controlling,
but was actually fantastic customer service.

The star stuck New York Times is out shilling for Jeremy Piven. The Old Gray Lady appears to be smitten with the actor, perhaps that’s why it’s the only paper reporting that Piven, “convinced a group of fellow actors that he did not violate his contractual obligations when he dropped out of the Broadway play “Speed-the-Plow.”

More accurately, what actually happened, as reported by the Associated Press, New York Newsday and others, was “a panel composed of Actors’ Equity and Broadway League representatives were unable to reach the necessary unanimous decision.” So Piven’s laughable mercury poising from fish excuse lives another day. You see he convinced the actors on the panel he was being honest but the producers didn’t buy it.

Piven’s not outta the woods by any stretch of the imagination. He may have been able convince his peers of his story but on-the-record comments he has made in the past stand in stark contrast to the latest in scientific research on mercury in fish and could come back to haunt him.

If this thing goes to real court (not actor’s court – insert appropriate Judge Wapner, Rusty the bailiff or Doug Llewelyn joke here) Piven’s gonna have some splainin’ to do. Courts usually don’t accept anecdotal diagnoses as the end all be all- so Piven should be prepared to submit his medical records and call on his crocodile tears to testify. While the plaintiffs should be prepared to submit his bar tab and call on the entire country of Japan; where people eat far more commercial seafood than Piven but don’t complain about mercury poising, to testify.

Hawaii is really close to Japan. This is something I tend to forget because it
feels very much like America
here. But we are on a tiny island, just
a stone’s throw away from Asia. I was reminded of this fact when we happened
upon a Japanese phenomenon right here in our own neighborhood – the revolving
sushi bar. Invented by a 23-year-old
Japanese man in 1968, the concept of sushi speeding by diners’ tables on a
“kaiten” (basically a conveyer belt) is wildly popular in Japan. Genki Sushi – the original kaiten-style sushi
– has over 150 locations, a handful of which are located in Hawaii.

It works like this…You sit down with a menu of options, all
color coded by price category. Take as
many little plates of sashimi, rolls, and tempura as you like. And then at the end, your server simply
counts the amount of plates you have in each color and gives you your
bill. Wasabi, ginger, tea, and miso soup
are all you can eat.

The sushi was average, but the concept was well worth our
visit. It’s a fun way to eat, and really
allows you to stop exactly when you’re full.

A day after the FDA released an exhaustive, peer-reviewed, draft report analyzing the state of seafood science over the past 5 years that demonstrates just how much the benefits of eating seafood outweigh any concerns about trace amounts of mercury, you might wonder why I am blogging about Jeremy Piven. There is a tie-in, trust me.

NFI’s YouTube rebuttal of Piven’s Good Moring American interview is getting quite a lot of attention. In fact the celebrity blogosphere is percolating with our fact-based assessment of Piven’s tale, complete with headlines like The Human Thermometer is Trying to Salvage His Reputation.

Our review of his interview with Dianne Sawyer came before the previously mentioned FDA report was posted, so we didn’t have the opportunity to include this little nugget- and this is where it gets worse for Piv– the FDA report states, in describing Table IIIA, that overt harm from mercury is seen at levels more than 100 times the average level in the U.S.

Now, let’s think back to the Good Moring America interview (insert blurry oscillating lines here accompanied by flute & timpani riff) when Piven suggested the overt harm he received came from 6 times the average level and what’s more he suggested doctors were stunned by his levels and had to test 3 times befor they believed how high they were. Why this wonderful story just gets curiouser and curiouser, doesn’t it?

Piven seems like the literary type. So, for him a subtle reminder from Sir Walter Scott, “Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive.”