use real butter

While I am in between X-ray and heart scan, I’m making good use of the wireless network in this part of the hospital. Oooh, someone in medical imaging just gave me a meal voucher! I love this hospital, people are so friendly and upbeat. Unfortunately I can’t eat anything for the next 3 hours, but hopefully I won’t be feeling nauseous when I’m done so I might get myself a sammy.

This blog revolves around food and so does my life. I’m sure I think about food and what I’m going to prepare and eat much more than the average bear. Probably not too much more than the average food blogger :) One thing I wasn’t expecting over the next several months is that I would have to make a few adjustments to my diet. The main kicker: no sushi. *gasp* Honestly, I can forgo anything if necessary. I am not so inflexible.

What better reason to go and enjoy a nice sushi lunch with my sweetheart? There are a lot of places in Boulder to have sushi considering the landlocked status of the state. I haven’t lived here long enough to accept the prices for the quality compared to what I got in So Cal. Okay, but there is one place that has excellent quality and a price tag to match: Sushi Tora.

best sushi bet in boulder

We hadn’t eaten anything all day. We spent the morning taking our house apart and moving that brick of a treadmill upstairs. By 2 pm, we were famished. Let’s start with something from the kitchen:

seaweed salad

agedashi tofu

It’s a nice way to whet your appetite while perusing the menu. We sort of went nuts on the ordering because we were hungry and we knew it would be a while before we could enjoy this together (well, Jeremy is free to sushi on his own, but knowing him, he won’t).

sashimi assortment

toro (fatty tuna): gdddddgdgdgdgdgdg

I was satisfied after the toro. It was sooooooo good. One of those foods that transports you to Someplace Else. I think it’s on par with sex. I mean on par with good sex, not just any old sex. It’s the kind of toro you think about several times a day, for a couple of days after the meal. That kind of toro. I said I was satisfied, but… maki is so fun to eat.

spider roll

toro no maki: salmon, avocado, tobiko, unagi

The rolls were good. In hindsight I might have preferred ordering more toro sashimi instead, but I do love the subtle combination of sushi rice and seaweed and all of those lovely fishy things. And to top it all off - what I call dessert:

wasabi tobiko with quail egg

I think my love of tobiko with quail egg is based on 25% flavor and 75% texture. The creamy, buttery smoothness of the yolk oozing all over my mouth while the little tobiko crunch and pop their salty flavor pairs with the slight acidity of the seasoned sushi rice and the refreshing flavor of the nori. The rice lends a hefty chew and I won’t even get into the punch of the wasabi. I know most sushi chefs are mortified when Chinese come to dine on their fine creations, dousing them in wasabi as thick as paste and requesting, “more spicy” versions. We are, in their eyes, barbarians. Well, I’ve never been known for my subtlety.

After the meal, Jeremy had to roll me out the door. No worries though. That treadmill is in place and it rocks! The treadmill (when it’s running) scares the hell out of the poor dog. Check it.

to make up for those extra maki

When Kell asked me what I would want for a last meal, sushi was my immediate answer. I love sushi - California style. That is, not in the traditional Japanese sense only because I haven’t been exposed to the traditional except in New Zealand (go figure). The Chinese are notorious for bastardizing sushi by dousing it with Sriracha and then dunking it in wasabi with a dash of soy sauce. *raises hand - guilty*

Jeremy and I had it good for almost a decade. We had a favorite sushi bar Ai, in South Pasadena. Fumito is the head chef there and he not only treated us to the best sushi, but he became our friend - teaching us to distinguish Good from Bad, sushi. When we moved to Colorado we discovered a handful of decent sushi joints in Boulder, but… price and quality just couldn’t compare to So Cal. They just can’t. We’ll dine out for sushi on occasion in town, but we will more likely make our own at home.

I have a favorite roll from Ai, the Not-So-Special Roll. Fumito has a Special Roll on the menu which is spicy tuna and spicy scallop with avocado, masago, and sometimes cucumber or daikon sprouts all crammed into a cut roll wrapped in halibut… or maybe snapper? I can’t recall because the Not-So-Special Roll omitted the outside fish (just because it got to be incredibly filling). That was my brain child and Fumito was happy to oblige. And that is what we create at home when we start to miss Fumito and all of the regulars at the sushi bar - except Hector and Eddie, those two made me laugh so hard I almost snorted my drink out my nose.

After spending the morning prepping our doors for the winter onslaught and then noodling around the hardware store for Things That Don’t Exist, we swung by Whole Foods to pick up some sea critters. We started with scallop carpaccio, something akin to a small plate I enjoyed with Kell and Jerad at Fish Face in Sydney (awesome place to eat if you’re ever there). I am a sucker for ponzu.

scallop carpaccio with ponzu

I prepped the sashimi, spicy tuna, and spicy scallop while Jeremy mixed the sushi rice. In a tribute to Fumito, Jeremy made a couple of Not-So-Special rolls. I wrapped a few handrolls and before we knew it, we could barely move from the table for the state of food coma we were falling into.

sake and maguro

temaki-zushi

not-so-special #1

not-so-special #2

With the trails on the upper mountain closed due to snow (sheesh), we could have attempted another steep trail this morning, except I was tired of the frenetic pace of waking early to hike hard and fast only to return to the timeshare to entertain my parents for the rest of the day. This morning I took my parents to Brandywine Falls, a nearby short hike to what turned out to be the best waterfall I’ve seen in the area.

brandywine falls - a spectacular display

It was thankfully cooler, but muggy and extremely buggy. The mosquitoes are quite large here and although they weren’t attacking and buzzing around kamikaze style (like they always seem to do in the backcountry), they would land on you and take a nip if you weren’t vigilant. A high pressure system has been sitting atop Whistler for the past couple of days and that is something to really enjoy. Just that when it’s nice and sunny, it gets to be warm and sometimes the air is that awful still, thick, suffocating air. My parents liked the falls and then we took them for a short hike to lava lake, which was neither lava nor really a lake. Still, I think my parents aren’t paying that much attention to where we hike or what we see, rather they like to just get out, be active, and talk with us.

mom and dad getting into the whole woods and scenery thing

We returned to the time share so I could make lunch for everyone and then Jeremy and I left for the shelter.

We went to volunteer walk a dog at the Whistler Animal Shelter. As we pulled up to the building and parked along the side, we caught a glimpse of one of the dogs in the outside run. It had a cute face. Whistler’s animal shelter is a no-kill shelter, in other words, they do not euthanize animals if they can’t find a home. The new building is really nice and they have indoor and outdoor runs for the dogs, a cattery for people to go and give kitties some love and affection, and this awesome volunteer dog-walk program. After handing over my driver’s license, we were presented with Bodie. He’s a white husky mix and a handsome boy at that. Very sweet and mellow, yet extremely excited about his walk.

bodie and jeremy on one of many trails in whistler

Bodie was good at stay, sit, come, heel, wait. He looked up at me (or Jeremy - whoever was walking Bodie at the time) on occasion to make eye contact. I can’t believe he hasn’t been adopted yet. Such a sweet and obedient dog. Jeremy led the way along the creek then up to a network of trails near the village. When he went to check a mapboard, Bodie and I waited in the shade. I knelt down to pet him and he looked at me and began to cry. He definitely wanted to keep walking - what’s with the standing around crap?! So we went on some multiuse trails and Bodie wasn’t bothered by the mountain bikers at all. He was so happy to just keep walking and walking and sniffing and walking.

bodie loves his walks

After a few hours, we had to get back, so we brought Bodie back to the shelter. The woman behind the counter came around to get him while thanking us and asked if he was good (absolutely). Bodie immediately turned around and bounded toward the door as if to say, “Okay! another walkie!” I wanted to cry.

For dinner, we took a chance on Zen Whistler, a sushi bar. I was understandably gun shy about dining out in Whistler, but this one came through for our last evening. As expected, it was ass expensive, but the quality was quite good and our server was incredibly well-informed and polite.

zen whistler

the east meets west roll

chef’s assortment of sashimi

Definitely looking forward to heading back to Seattle tomorrow. I am not sure I’ll ever come back to Whistler. My memory is long and there were just too many things that pissed me off here. Whistler is fine, but personally, I can get just as good (if not better) with more solitude and peace right at home - and that’s why I live where I live.