Guess Who Ordered and Ate this Salad?
This is an Israeli salad. An Israeli salad is composed mainly of tomatoes, cucumbers, parsley and a lemon vinaigrette. We ate dinner on Saturday night at a Mediterranean restaurant that makes a very good Israeli salad. Oh, and remember my daughter Annie? You know, the one that gags on tomatoes? She ordered this salad. She first tried Israeli salad at some multicultural day at school and liked it!
Which just goes to show you that bending over backwards to accommodate the food preferences of kids is unnecessary because sooner or later they’re going to have someone introduce the abhorrent food to them in a different disguise and they’ll like it. As long as it wasn’t their parent’s idea.
Sake Bomb
I’ve been called many things in my day, but I’ve never been accused of being a teetotaler. Therefore, since I’ve rarely met a drink I couldn’t learn to love, I decided to give the Sake Bomb a try over the weekend. Friends who are readers of this blog brought over the Sake for me to mix up one of these bombs at our Christmas party. Festive.
As you can see, the glass at the base is filled (but not to the top) with beer. Two chopsticks are placed across the top, and then the most tricky part of setting up this drink, the shot of sake, is placed on top of the chopsticks. If I had taken a video instead of a still shot you would have seen the next step where the table is pounded until the chopsticks move and release the shot glass into the beer. Then you would have seen me lift the beer glass with shot glass sitting at the bottom and toss back the combined beverages as quickly as possible. Next you would have noticed the big splash of beer on the table cloth, as well as it splashing on my face, sweater and pants.
Trust me folks, if you ever try this be sure to have a deep beer glass and don’t fill it too high. Plus, the more people playing the game, the more fun it is. Finally, it’s best to do this in a restaurant where someone else will clean up the mess. Because I think the name Sake Bomb doesn’t come from the effect it has on the drinker (it was as tame as drinking a glass of wine or beer), but from the explosion that occurs on your table.
Of Course! I Should’ve Had a Sake Bomb
I’ve never really gotten the whole sushi thing. This photo was shared by a reader who really enjoys sushi, and I can certainly appreciate the visual appeal of this platter. But when I think about eating it, it leaves me rather cold, literally. There’s just nothing about the thought of cold, raw fish that sounds like, wow, I need to eat some of that right now. The wasabi and the pickled ginger are about the only items on the plate that whet my appetite. I’ve tried different types of sushi over the years, and though they weren’t terrible, I didn’t need to make a meal on them.
But back to this photo and the comments by the reader who sent this to me. The first thing he told me was “forgive me for not taking a picture of the sashimi platter as it was served after the Sake Bombs.” I wonder what that sashimi platter looked like, but I’m even more intrigued by the thought of the sake bombs. I asked for an explanation and this is what he offered: “It’s analogous to an Irish Car Bomb but it’s more of a drinking procedure. A three quarter glass of Asian beer is put in front of you. Two chopsticks are placed in parallel across the top of the glass. A sake cup filled with warm sake is balanced on top of the chopsticks. Everybody at the table then beats the table with the hands until the sake cup falls into the beer in front of them. Then the chopsticks are removed and the beer is chugged and the empty beer glass is slammed on the table. The first one who finishes his or her drink wins.”
Perhaps if I tried a few sake bombs I would get the whole sushi thing after all.
Thanks to my anonymous reader for this education on sushi and Asian fraternity drinking.