March 5, 2014 A Bad Food Day Lunch- Sushi King Dinner – Hamburger Steaks topped with Roquefort cheese, Roasted potatoes and mushrooms and steamed asparagus

March 5, 2014 A Bad Food Day  Lunch- Sushi King;   Dinner – Hamburger Steaks topped with Roquefort cheese, Roasted potatoes and mushrooms and steamed asparagus

The food today was dominated by things that were actually less than what they seem initially to be; a sort of deception involving food and a lesson to take care to protect your food sourcing by careful selection.  

Robert Mueller invited me to join him and Pete Dominici Jr. for lunch at Sushi King at 118 Central SW.  I did not know it was part of a chain of Sushi Kings until I looked at the website for it just now.  When we arrived Robert said lunch was on him, which I thought very generous.  I looked on the menu and saw very little that appealed to me until Robert mentioned that the sushi menu included Shirachi.  When Pete came and said he would eat anything, Robert ordered shirachi for all three of us.  

It was the worse looking shirachi I have ever seen and the least appealing combination of sliced fish and seafood I have ever seen.  First of all it used those colored imitation crab sticks made with ocean Pollack.  It had a cooked and peppered slice of some fish I could not identify and could hardly eat.  It did have a broad selection of fish with two small slices of salmon and three of maguro, two of red snapper and two of some other fish.  When I asked. “Where is the yellowtail?” Robert had to order some yellowtail.  Shortly thereafter, six lovely slices of yellowtail arrived on a bed of shredded fresh daikon.

    

The worst part of the dish was that the fish was rather unattractively arranged on a ill arranged pile of sushi rice on a heavy institutional ceramic plate.  Sushi King ranks at the top of the list of least attractively arranged and presented sushi I have ever eaten.  Everything pointed to the lowest common denominator in the selection of items and presentation.  I guess that is what one should expect to receive at a chain restaurant in downtown Albuquerque.   Robert chose the restaurant because it was close to Pete’s office and my appointment at Bill Turner’s office, but I shall not go to Sushi King again.

I enjoyed discussing war stories and the history of the Dominici house across the street from my house on Park Ave. with Pete.  After a lively conversation we parted with hardy goodbyes.

Dinner was equally bad, but from a selection and cholesterol standpoint.  After a wonderful meditation I called Suzette and she said there was no food at the Edible Santa Fe reception, so I stopped at Lowe’s to find some food.  I wanted some of the advertised chicken breasts on sale for $1.89/lb., but when I arrived at the cooler where they were kept they were all frozen and thus were not ready to cook.  I walked to the next cooler and found two lovely rounds of 85% lean hamburger for $4.99/lb. that cost $3.74, so I selected them.  I had a hankering for a hamburger steak with Blue cheese, which I knew Suzette would like also, so I looked in the cheese section in front of the meat department and found a 4 oz. wedge of real French President Brand Roquefort cheese for $4.49.  Then I walked to the ice cream freezer and found my favorite ice cream, Spumoni and selected a ½ gallon of it for $4.49, plus some cream cheese and fresh green onions.

When I arrived home around 8:30 Suzette had just arrived and was looking for dinner ingredients.  We walked into the garage and saw the PPI duck enchiladas and my heart fell.  We should have heated enchiladas and bagged the hamburger steak idea, but I suggested we have a hamburger with blue cheese and Suzette agreed, although she said she was getting ready to make a bacon burrito, which would have been a better choice.  We heated the PPI roasted potatoes with the sautéed mushrooms and steamed asparagus and I went to the basement and pulled a bottle of Tin Roof Winery 2007 Merlot.  I had added one-half of a large cucumber and half a shallot chopped to the oriental pickling liquid this morning and I served pickled cucumbers with a bit of pickled that I served with meal to give the meal a bit more complexity. 

The dinner was heavy but delicious and after dinner we discovered that the Roquefort cheese was old and heavily molded, sort of shop worn or wonderful, depending upon your taste in Roquefort cheese.  I smeared some with the heaviest molded areas on a few pieces of toasted baguette and ate them with the wine after we finished our hamburger and potatoes and asparagus dinner and found it delicious.

 

Unfortunately I awakened around 2:00 a.m. with my heart pounding and promised myself to not do such a heavy cholesterol dinner anytime soon.  How do people eat this kind of food all the time?  I guess the answer is, they cannot and live a healthy life.   I also promised myself to be more careful in my food selection and I can hardly wait for our garden to get planted.

Tonight’s meditation group was particularly wonderful.  It included the four regulars, Jim, Kris J.B. and me plus Peter, a new person who appears to be a Brit who used to live in Pasadena, California and was affiliated with the Quakers there, who wandered in tonight looking for the Wednesday evening Quaker meeting and found us instead.  He apparently has sat before and fit right in.  He introduced himself and we talked.  The energy in the group was great.  We sat one 30 minute sit and then had a 30 minute free association discussion.  Perhaps a bit like a Quaker meeting. 

  

Bon Appétit