use real butter

This is my first week of my radiation treatment. Unlike chemo, radiation is daily instead of once every three weeks. Unlike chemo, radiation lasts all of a few minutes instead of 3 hours. Unlike chemo, radiation doesn’t suck shit nearly as much! There are still going to be side effects, but they will appear later and won’t bring my life to a screeching halt quite like chemo did. At least, I hope they won’t.

in the stairwell of the cancer center

The cancer center is a lovely building and the people are so incredibly friendly and kind. I am in a good mood when I go in, and it’s not forced like it is when I have to deal with a department like General Surgery at the medical center. The other day when I went for my treatment, I wooshed into the dressing room and emerged in less than a minute with a gown on and dumped my stuff in a locker. One of my radiation techs said I was like a superhero, dashing into the changing room and emerging with a gown on faster than anyone. Ha ha! My dreams of superhero status will be realized yet :)

Another thing I like about radiation… I can eat sushi. And eat sushi, I have been. With gusto! as my dear oncologist would say (he didn’t tell me to eat sushi with gusto, he was asking me to breathe with gusto while he listened to my lungs). I had lunch with one of my tele betties in Boulder yesterday at Sushi Tora. I could eat sushi every day for every meal and never tire of it. Never.

my bee-yoo-tee-ful chirashi

Just the day before, I met up with Jeremy at Ai Sushi and Steak at Boulder’s 29th Street mall. It’s a relatively new restaurant in the relatively new pedestrian mall. We thought it looked a little mall-ish which isn’t what you necessarily want when hunting for a good sushi dive.

bad idea: posting photos of sushi in black and white

the modern interior

The place is huge with a section for teppan, a sit down section, and a relatively large sushi bar and booze bar. I’m guessing it seats about 120. I honestly didn’t have high expectations for the place, but immediately noted that our server, a young Japanese woman, was ten times more professional than the dorkus at Sushi Tora and she spoke fluent Japanese (with the sushi chefs). Bonus.

starter salads and jeremy’s lychee martini

sunlight roll and hamachi nigiri

The starter salads were a mix of mi fun (thin rice noodles) with real crab meat, and avocado in a light seasoned rice wine vinegar. Delicious and refreshing on such a warm day (it was 90F in Boulder) - it also cleansed the palate nicely. Since it was happy hour, Jeremy sprang for a lychee martini and we began with a sunlight roll (soft shell crab, eel, avocado, and 2 colors of flying fish roe) and an order of hamachi nigiri. The sunlight roll was great if you like the combo of crunchy, salty, sweet, smooth, creamy - which we do! Excellent quality hamachi.

otoro sashimi

special roll - our request: spicy tuna, spicy scallop, avocado, masago

Next came our otoro sashimi which was $6 a piece. Toro is fatty tuna or the belly of the tuna. Otoro is the fattiest part of the belly (chutoro isn’t as fatty, but is part of the belly). This was quiet amazing and melt-in-your-mouth, but I’ve had better otoro at other places and for less than $6 a piece. The special roll was our own requested combination - a holdover from our favorite sushi joint in South Pasadena. It was well done, but not as good as the original.

samurai

end it on tamago

The samurai roll is a shrimp tempura roll with tuna, salmon, eel, and avocado. I liked this roll, but I prefer the sunshine roll to this one. We finally ended with an order of tamago (egg omelette) nigiri and Jeremy had another order of hamachi nigiri. The prices were on par with Sushi Tora and the quality was pretty good - perhaps a half notch below Tora. The service was better despite the “mall-ish” setting and feel of the place. And there always seems to be one sushi chef who loves to flirt with the ladies - he was a charmer for sure. Who doesn’t love a man who offers you a complimentary specialty maki? Unfortunately, he offered it after we had finished our meal and were ready to pop like two fat ticks.

Now that we have two restaurants on the tour, I can begin ranking them:

1) Sushi Tora
2) Ai Sushi and Steak

Ai is a close second to Tora. Stay tuned to see if next week’s selection dethrones Tora.

Remember when I said I was going to eat sushi when my Gi tract healed up and my immune system returned to normal? Yesterday began our sushi tour. We decided to start with the familiar because I didn’t want to deal with any unpleasant surprises. Sushi Tora in Boulder is our local favorite.

a perfect day for sushi

Oh, but before I dive into the meal, I have been tagged by Sarah of Sweet Endeavors for a meme. Thanks Sarah! I haven’t been good about memes lately because of chemo crap and such. So here goes:

1) What were you doing ten years ago?
I was in graduate school at Cornell. I was working my ass off toward a PhD and I had just begun to realize that this gig was starting to suck big time.

2) What are five non-work things on my to-do list for today?
1) pick up my compression sleeve for my lymphedema
2) candy an ass ton of orange peels
3) apply dry rub to some pork shoulder
4) work out
5) give the pup a bath

3) What snacks do you enjoy?
1) jalapeño potato chips
2) jicama
3) mango
4) dill pickles
5) fruity popsicles

4) What would you do if you were a billionaire?
1) endow jeremy’s faculty position
2) open a free kitchen in my community to serve delicious food
3) promote math and science education the right way
4) teach kickass babes (and ONLY kickass babes) to tele
5) blog

5) Where have you lived?
1) Virginia
2) Ann Arbor, Michigan
3) Pasadena, California
4) Ithaca, New York
5) Colorado

6) What jobs have you had?
1) crash test engineer
2) flight crash analyst and programmer
3) NASA software engineer
4) web content manager, designer, and programmer
5) GIS and remote sensing chick

And I am tagging…

Amy at eggs on sunday
Graeme at Blood Sugar
Katie at The Wasatch Report
Kevin at Closet Cooking
Mark at No Special Effects

Sushi Tora elicits images of fresh ingredients because they have an amazing assortment of herbs and vegetables plated alongside their fabulous seafood (most of it flown in daily). My greatest beef with the place is their clueless wait staff - the typical (white) young urban hipster in Boulder who is lacking in knowledge of both sushi and waiting tables. They really detract from the overall experience.

probably one of the few things i dislike here

We started with a tiny bowl of noodles. They always hand this to you with your gari (ginger) and wasabi. I’m not a fan. This is probably the only thing that I’m not fond of and it’s not on the menu, you just get it by default. On to the business at hand, we ordered a seaweed salad from the kitchen because it is a fresh and light way to start the meal. Theirs is always perfectly seasoned with the right amount of sweet and sour and salt and mmmm.

seaweed salad

Typically when we sit at the bar, a delicious little something comes compliments of the chef. This time it was salmon collar. Wonderfully tender and fatty. It’s my second favorite part of the fish. My favorite - the belly.

grilled salmon collar, on the house

No fooling around. The only sushi I had on the brain during my chemo was toro - fatty tuna. It is like butter, but it’s fish, but it melts like butter, but it’s fish… The stuff is not cheap, nor should it be, because it is amazing. We splurged on some toro sashimi (from the specials menu) and some hamachi sashimi. I normally love hamachi, but I realized the folly of my ways when I sank my teeth into the toro. We should have sprung for two orders of toro and nixed the hamachi (even though it was good, it wasn’t toro).

toro (fatty tuna) and hamachi (yellowtail) sashimi

Jeremy had a mind to sample some baracuda nigiri off the specials menu and I wanted my fix of crunchy tobiko (flying fish roe) with that smooth and rich quail egg on top. It’s like dessert, really. No really. He gave the baracuda a thumbs up.

baracuda nigiri and tobiko with quail egg

Like I said, I didn’t want to fill up on rice, but I love maki of all sorts and there was still room in the tummy. Spider rolls are a no brainer. I could eat soft shell crabs all day long. They make a decent spider roll here. We also ordered a half roll of the Tora No Maki which is salmon, avocado, tobiko, and unagi (fresh water eel) - the combination of which is silk and sweet in your mouth. Next time, we’re ordering a whole roll.

spider roll and tora no maki

As an afterthought, we made one last order of ama ebi. Raw sweet shrimp is terrific, but it’s the fried shrimp heads that I’m crazy about. The shrimp heads were enormous. I almost couldn’t believe those heads came from those bodies. I felt the heads were over-battered, which gave them that heavy fried feeling instead of the typically light and delicate feeling you get with most fried Japanese food.

ama ebi (sweet shrimp)

While we were still eating, our waiter approached and asked if we wanted any dessert. We found it peculiar that he should ask while we were obviously in the middle of our meal. We said no thanks and without asking, he snatched up our order sheet and totaled our bill. What is up with that? For all he knew, we could have been ready to order more (we weren’t, but still…) I didn’t like that guy.

Overall, Sushi Tora still remains champ of Boulder sushi. We’ll see if they can keep the title over the next few weeks… meanwhile, I am thrilled to be noshing on sushi, my #1 favorite food of all time.

Over the weekend, we did a little sampling of a few dining establishments. It’s nice to be able to eat out again without the worry of getting sick from ice, utensils, garnishes, and even the food itself. I’m no longer neutropenic! We dropped by Wild Mountain Smokehouse in our own little town because Jeremy was in the mood for some Tennessee style pulled pork (where he spent many a summer of his youth).

i love me a little piggy

a third rack of ribs

The last time we ate here was after a chemo infusion (because I could usually stomach one meal before everything went to hell in a handbasket). I distinctly remember feeling so disappointed because the barbecue didn’t taste particularly good to me, and I assumed it was my chemo. It wasn’t my chemo… I really wanted to believe that the ‘cue was good here, but it isn’t so. My barbecue kicks its ass and I don’t even smoke my meats. Jeremy was disappointed with his pulled pork sandwich (and the reason for that might be because I had made him a pulled pork sandwich earlier in the week - Carolina style). And something is just amiss with their sauces - at least the Tennessee (vinegar-based) and their Texas (tomato-based) sauces.

The next morning we hoofed it on down to friggin’ Denver (I never like going into Denver - I never like heading East). We had two of our buds in tow with us because dim sum should always be enjoyed in multiples of 4 or 6 to maximize the sampling. I had searched online for the best dim sum in Denver and came up with Superstar Asian (I know… who names these places? Those *crazy* Asians…). They serve dim sum all week, but folks advised going on weekends when turnover is high and the output is fresh.

my chicas ready to chow down

Best in Denver. I suppose it may very well be the best in Denver. My problem (and I realize it is MY problem) is that I have eaten dim sum almost exclusively in Los Angeles and San Francisco - and Denver is neither of those. Not even close. I rate Superstar a C overall, but with grade inflation on the rise and this being Colorado (i.e. the middle of BFE as Asian cuisine goes) you could slide that scale to a B. They carried many of the standards that we enjoy like taro dumplings, shrimp and Chinese chive potstickers, riblets, bbq pork buns, braised pork and vegetables wrapped in tofu sheet, turnip cake, Chinese broccoli, tofu flower (sweet) and some of the items that I don’t dig (but my parents like): tripe, stomach, braised chicken feet, etc. But everything I ate was made in a crude fashion, the flavor either inferior or slightly off because of the addition of some random and odd herb. The bbq pork buns (a standard) were downright wrong. At least all of the ladies carting food around understood mandarin (well, they understood my mandarin) and they were as pushy as the best of them (a good sign). The clientele was mostly Asian, perhaps the single largest concentration of Asians I’ve seen in Colorado outside of Super H Mart thus far.

I avoided fish for the past 5 months. Obviously I couldn’t eat sushi because of my compromised immune system, but I also just didn’t eat cooked fish. They said if you really love a food, to avoid it during chemo just in case you get sick on it and have bad associations afterward. But I have the green light now. And green means GO.

oh, you beaut

I read somewhere that the Boulder Whole Foods sells the highest volume of seafood of all the Whole Foods in the US. There is always a line at the counter and their seafood is surprisingly gorgeous and fresh for being 1000+ miles from the ocean. It’s where we picked up a pound of luscious wild Copper River salmon for $30! I couldn’t resist. It sang to me from behind the display case.

simple lemon and dill

I like talking fish at the counter because people never expect a chick to know her fish, but I do. I began fishing at the age of 3 and we fished freshwater, brackish, salt water. I fished ponds, streams, rivers, piers, surfs. Once some dude was asking about a special shipment of bluefish and I made a face. He asked me why I was grimacing and I explained that we used to catch blues in Virginia and I would never eat one older than a few hours dead - because the flesh turns powdery in no time flat. So why on Earth would you eat one that was sitting on a plane for hours on its trip to Boulder? And then there was the time someone asked me to explain why the belly is so desirable for sushi lovers… [A totally hot guy in line after me. Yes Mark, there I go again - but he was impeccably polite, tall, and handsome - Jeremy will confirm this!]

to the grill!

We grilled that delightful hunk o’ salmon with a sprinkle of salt, lemon slices, and fresh dill. Just a quick, simple, and satisfying way to serve a lovely fish. I used to get nervous grilling fish without foil underneath (that fear of watching it fall apart and down through the grate of the grill). Then ten years ago, my parents were visiting and while I was admiring a Williams-Sonoma fish grilling basket, my dad walked by and grabbed it from my hands and bought it for me. I love it and I love grilling fish with it because I can get the direct heat and all of the flavor without my fish sitting in a pool of liquid. I like the crunchy, crispy bits too. In any case, it was worth the wait.

fan-friggin’-tastic

Simple Grilled Salmon

1-2 pound filet of fresh salmon
2 lemons, sliced thin
2 cups fresh dill sprigs
salt

Layer lemon slices on fish basket. Set salmon over the slices (skin down). Sprinkle salt over salmon, layer with dill, then layer with more lemon slices. Close the basket. Grill over medium high heat, skin-side up for ~8 minutes (depends on thickness of your fish). Flip over and cook another 5 minutes or until done. Serve hot.