Day 54: Sushi

I met a friend for a lunch date today. We used to meet at the sushi house and have lunch together all the time. As in, every couple of months. Last time we went, I admitted that I only went there when I went with her, and she said she hadn't been since the last time we were there together. That was over a year ago, but when we planned lunch, we just had to do sushi.

I knew it would be risky. I didn't know if I could communicate a gluten allergy to the server (everyone who works there is very Japanese). I knew a lot of things are breaded and deepfried, or covered with sauces.

So I got there a little early, and studied the menu. I used to get a bento box with teriyaki chicken, a salad, some rice, some california rolls, and some sushi. But that was really out of the question, so I analyzed everything else I knew I liked.

Cali rolls were safe, my second favorite dynamite rolls were not. The bagel roll, which has cream cheese seemed to be. So I settled on that but knew I'd still be hungry. A side of rice would be hard to not eat with soya sauce, so I got some miso soup. It has tofu, and green onion in it.

Several slurps into my soup, I thought about how the broth tastes like beer, and googled it. It's made from fermented wheat, barley, or rice. Which means there's a 70% chance it's bad. I put it aside and didn't touch it again. I also managed to eat all my sushi without dipping any of it in soya sauce. I also managed to avoid the fortune cookies. That was hard. Those things are my favorite.

But I feel like all that work was for naught. I feel glutened now, and I'm pretty sure it was the soup. If I hadn't gotten the soup, and I didn't feel bad now, I'd know sushi was safe. But now I don't know. It could be the soup, but what if the soup was made from rice? What if the sushi was cross-contaminated? Urgh. Stupid me. Asian food is supposed to be the safest, because they don't have this wheat craze like America does. But soup? Blurgh.

So... I might eat there again sometime. When someone else wants sushi. That will never be my husband, so it might not be for a long time. Until then, I don't really know if sushi is safe or not. And then, it would depend on the place and how they assemble it. If the tempura sushi touches the same stuff mine does, it wouldn't be safe anyways.

Haha. So, my friend got two rolls with tempura shrimp. When the server came out with our food, we couldn't understand what she said, so my friend just took the first plate, and then my plate was just covered in breaded shrimp and the sushi was slathered in an unknown sauce. I just stared at it for a second, and then said, "Uh, that's not mine." And then we realized we'd accidentally switched. Haha. I freaked out for about a second.