Thursday was Boyfriend’s birthday. He thinks he’s old, but really, he’s not, so he just needs to get over that. Anyway, I was absolutely forbidden to tell any of our friends that his birthday was coming up. He did not want a big deal made and did not want to be surprised. Well, I got around that, and without breaking any laws that he set for me. Hahahahahahahaha!
I may have mentioned that Boyfriend’s ex-gf was instrumental in getting us together. We are all friends, so that made it easy to plan things behind his back. A little over a month ago, we were all at a party and I had some time to chat with her. I asked her if she knew when Boyfriend’s birthday was, and she gave me the date, so I knew she had the right answer. I then told her that I was under no circumstances allowed to tell anyone about it. She got that ear-to-ear shit-eating grin on her face and said she had it covered. Ha! Now I was able to make a big deal about it without breaking any rules or doing much of anything in the way of planning. I knew the rest of our friends would run away with it, because that’s the kind of pals they are.
As for a more private celebration, I knew there had to be a gift. I had a few ideas of what to get him, but wasn’t having much luck finding what I wanted. No worries, it still leaves me ideas for the holidays. Anyway, I was just checking one last store at the mall when I found a Pouring Shield for the Kitchen-Aid mixer. Boyfriend has a Kitchen-Aid, which if any of you have used one is the greatest stand mixer ever. Boyfriend likes to bake, but makes a horrible mess because food is always flying out of the bowl. The pouring shield prevents this, so his gift ended up being one of those utilitarian things that makes (my) life easier. (I’m the one who does the cleaning, but let me tell you, cleaning up last night after he made cookies was much less of an ordeal than cleaning up after he made pie a few weeks ago.)
Now don’t go thinking that I’m the kind of girlfriend who gifts The Greatest Boyfriend of All Time with a little hunk of plastic and calls it good. Oh, no. No, the next part of his gift was designed to make him deliriously happy. Since they say that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, I took him out for dinner.
Before I go any further, let me tell you a few things about Boyfriend and me. I am from New England - suburban, bordering on rural. Adventurous eating is something that is just not done where I come from. I have an aunt and uncle who travel quite a bit and they eat weird stuff when they travel, and my step dad is known in the family to be a human garbage disposal. But other than that, our diets are really quite basic - the All-American, 1950’s Betty Crocker cookbook kinds of diets. Boyfriend, on the other hand, is from California. He eats weird stuff like avocados and sushi and other weird California stuff. So finding a happy medium is not always easy when either one of us is craving food from our respective back home area. Boyfriend thinks I don’t try enough new things (read: stuff he likes), but he’s slowly coming to the realization that I am one of the most adventurous eaters in my family and is starting to cut me some slack.
Back to dinner out. In the ultimate sacrifice of making my man happy on his birthday, I decided that I was going to choke down a piece of fish bait take him out for sushi. Boyfriend loves sushi, whereas I, coming from Massachusetts in particular, believe that there are only 2 ways to eat fish: beer-battered, deep fried and covered in ketchup, or baked/broiled/fried with lots of breadcrumbs and butter on the top. Either way it is served with a potato of some sort - either fries or baked/mashed. But do note that the fish is COOKED in both circumstances. Cooked in normal ingredients. Sushi, as most of you probably know, is raw fish wrapped in rice and seaweed and stuffed with other weird stuff like avocado, which seems to be in every freaking different kind of sushi there is. But no matter, it was going to make him happy for me to try it, so that is what I was going to do.
I was going to do a bit of a fake out on him by parking in the Red Lobster parking lot, which is next door to the fish bait sushi place that Boyfriend has mentioned. But before we got there, he figured it out, so dammit, fake-out cancelled. No matter. I had already done some reconnaissance on the place and saw that they had teriyaki bowls, so I would still have something to eat. We got there, sat down, and Boyfriend started going over the menu with me. There are some varieties that have cooked seafood in them, which was good since I am still completely repulsed by the thought of eating raw seafood. To me it’s on par with eating raw chicken or pork, so that was a no-go. Boyfriend selected some with cooked crab in it. Not a huge fan of crab on its own, but I suppose if I had committed to this, then that was it.
Let me tell you something else about sushi. When it arrives at your table, it is cut into bit-sized pieces. Well, bite-sized if you have a ginormous mouth like say, Julia Roberts, or you have a flip-top head like that cartoon guy in the Reach Toothbrush commercial. I do not have a huge mouth (no comments from the peanut gallery, please. I am talking about physical size here.) When I was getting braces on at the ripe old age of 16, I had to have not only my 4 wisdom teeth pulled, but also all 4 of my first bicuspids removed to make it all fit properly. My mouth is small. Individual pieces of sushi are not. They are not dainty, like the tiny 1-inch petit-fours you see on fancy dessert plates. No, they are huge 2-inch diameter rolls that are 1-inch high. How does one delicately shove it all in their mouth at one time? I didn’t want to appear that I was spewing sushi all over the table for any reason. I wanted to be polite and eat it all and actually have it go down. The giant piece was not going to do, so I cut it in half. I put it on my fork (because by now it would have fallen apart had I attempted to use chopsticks), and held it in front of my face for about 10 minutes before I finally got up the nerve to just shove it in.
It was not terrible. It wasn’t great, either. The crab meat was a bit overwhelming, and the rest of it didn’t leave much of an impression on me either way. Boyfriend had a look on his face that was mostly amused and of course totally in love with me for doing this for him. I finished chewing it and chased it with large amounts of Diet Coke, and ate some teriyaki, which, by the way, was really not that good. After a short time I finally got up the nerve to try the other half. This one didn’t have as much crab meat in it, so I thought it would be easier, but no, I was wrong. This one had a giant blob of cream cheese in it. Have I mentioned that I hate cream cheese? So this piece was worse because of that vile, tangy substance gluing itself to the deepest reaches of my mouth and refusing to budge. A refill on my Diet Coke finally fixed that.
The rest of the evening was really awesome, since it was more natural and I really had nothing to do with it (other than putting the pieces in place that allowed the cat to let itself out of the bag). We met our friends at our usual Thursday night gathering. There were a lot more people there than usual, and the vibe was really great, which is just not something that can be planned. One of our friends brought a cake, a delicious black forest cake, and we talked and laughed and had a great time. I really couldn’t have done a better job, because like I said, the vibe of the evening was really natural. On the way home I told Boyfriend how I got Ms. X in on it, and he was quite impressed with my sneaky, devious nature while still following his wishes.
So that was it - I ate sushi, and it wasn’t terrible. Boyfriend thinks I like it, because he says my face gave me away. I wouldn’t go that far. I might try it again, perhaps in a better quality place that has really good teriyaki, but I can assure you, like all Asian and Asian-inspired foods, it will not be something that I crave. But I ate it, and I did it because I love my Boyfriend and wanted him to have the bestest birthday ever. I don’t know if it was the best birthday ever, but he did say that it was a very good birthday, so mission accomplished.
