Food Obsessions

As a foodie, although that's way too benign a word for my lifelong relationship with food, I have had one food obsession after another.  There is a new one heading my way:  sushi.  My standard saying about sushi has been along the lines of "Oh, I don't eat food like that - in little bites.  Too, fussy."  What I really meant was "not enough food."   But at SUNY New Paltz, my favorite colleagues Shelly and Mary Beth eat sushi and it's so pretty!  So neat.  And another of my long term food obsessions is with ginger, and look, there's little ribbons of ginger (pickled?  cooked?) with sushi.  And then there is the chop stick thing.  We have been, "oh, could we have silverware" people at various Asian restaurants (too old for chop sticks, I guess), and it wasn't until our lovely afternoon of eating in Flushing last August that I committed myself to chop sticks.  No more forks for me!  So I'm looking for reasons to use chop sticks.  (Another parenthetical statement - in every chop stick opportunity, I start out well and my physical skill disintegrates.  What's up with that?)  

We were in Grand Haven for Ken's birthday and were having a day with a late breakfast and an early dinner.  No way was there not going to be lunch, so in Meijer's, I find packages of sushi and it's perfect!  Real food, so I do not feel deprived, but small bites of food - and good food.  Rice (another long term obsession), veggies, and an opportunity to use chop sticks.  What a deal!  

Since February 6, I have had opportunity to eat sushi 3 more times.  Have you noticed that sushi has become like pizza - originally quite exotic, now so much in the culture that you forget it was not invented right here in America?  I had sushi on Monday night, after the WONK meeting and before the first read-through of Blood Wedding.  I had sushi for lunch on Friday, eating it at the brown bag open forum for budget ideas.  Yesterday, I ate sushi at the Whole Foods in Columbus Circle - brown rice, veggies and a yummy soy-based ginger sauce.  Here we have it, a food obsession coming my way.  Will it be enduring or short-lived?  Full-blown or partial?  Stay tuned, dear readers.

We saw The American Plan yesterday at the Friedman Theater on 47th Street.  We bought tickets (relatively) cheaply, and were in the front row!  I mean we could see pores in faces.  Written by Richard Greenberg, it stars Mercedes Ruehl and Lily Rabe as well as some others I had not heard of.  Very, very interesting.  We saw Becky Shaw a few weeks ago, and those two in conjunctions are rattling around in my brain.  Both very American stories.  Both about love and deceit.  Mercedes Ruehl came out and answered questions for a half hour after the performance.  She is amazing.  We then went to a new restaurant that I can see becoming part of our standard group - Ali Baba on 34th between 3rd and 2nd.  It's Turkish and, unusually so, it has a vegetarian section.  Fabulous bread, another of my long, long, enduring obsessions.  

New York was wonderful as ever.  We saw three people we knew!  Itty from the Art Department and Patricia, who teaches Spanish and is a fellow Blood Wedding dramaturg, on the train and Kim from the Community College chorale in Whole Foods.  What does it mean that we run into people we know in New York?  

It's snowing now (no, no, no more snow!) and we'll head up to Hudson to have lunch with Maggie and Vince, then to an Oscar party with Maryann and Glenn.  

Life is good; and March is in our sights.