Please note that all blog posts before 8 April 2007 were automatically imported from LiveJournal. To see the comments and any LiveJournal-specific extras such as polls and user icons, please find the source posting at http://brianenigma.livejournal.com/2002/06/MMMmmmm….raw tunafish….raw salmon…. You can tell the mark of good fish by how easily it melts on your tongue–like butter. I discovered a few weeks ago that you can get sashimi pretty cheap from the Japanese market. Today, I finally took advantage of that fact. I got two chunks of fish, each about the size of a cow tongue, the salmon for $3.50 and the tuna for $6.50. We are talking about four to size times the amount you would get for the same price at a sushi place. I would be making sushi out of this, but the rice machine is full of the wrong kind of rice and I am too hungry and too lazy to make a new batch and get out the seaweed paper and bamboo rolling mat. Besides, the fish is nearly gone as I write this between mouthfuls.
While I was getting the sushi-grade fish, I also picked up a tin of wasabi (the REAL stuff, not the nearly tasteless stuff I got at the local supermarket), some soy sauce, and some rice vinegar. I managed to pass up the octopus tentacle. There was already enough fish in my basket that had to be eaten fairly soon, and I was not sure I could also finish the octopus. Admittedly, though, it would have made an awesome toy to gross out Kate. It was a single purple and white tentacle, about half the length of my arm, coiled in a spiral, complete with the suction cups. Just imagine all the fun you could have with a cartoon-y tentacle!! I also passed up the bag of dried anchovies. Basically, it looked like a clear bag of chips or pretzels, only these pretzel sticks had shiny metallic scales and eyes with which to stare back at you. I kind of doubt they would have been good, but there was certainly a high freak-factor to them.
Speaking of freaking out and/or amusing Meta_Kate, I performed another experiment this morning. I ran out of shaving cream and noticed that the kind I have (it is this weird translucent-toothpaste-green shaving gel stuff that expands and turns white when it hits air) happens to have a little rubber stopper in the bottom. Now, I have run across similar rubber stoppers in things like cheese in a spraycan. The cheese stopper was absolutely not interesting. Basically, the cheese can had cheese on the top, a sliding white plastic stopper in the center, and compressed air in the bottom next to the stopper (kind of like a pneumatic syringe). Remove the cheese stopper caused a little bit of a pressure release and nothing more. Now, the shaving gel ended up being an ENTIRELY different matter. Imagine my surprise when, thinking the gel followed the same pattern, I managed to wedge the rubber stopper open slightly and both compressed air AND shaving cream came out of the empty canister. And we are not talking a little spurt–we are talking “hey, it’s time to take this thing outside.” I ended up with a spray of foam across my pants and shirt, and even even in my hair! The canister spray got a little more slow and a lot more consistent. You know the 4th of July snakes that are now banned in Orange County (if not all of California)? The black canisters that expand off the top to form a black charcoal snake? This was a photo-negative of that. A white canister with a slow white snake expanding from the top, at just the same speed as the fireworks only MUCH more volume. I got foamy white snakes all over the front yard. The wind picked up a few and delivered them to the neighbors. Basically, this EMPTY canister produced enough foam to shave about 10 to 20 times. I finally gave up because it slowed down enough to lose the fun factor and put it on the trashcan in the back yard. That was 15 minutes ago, and there is still a snake very slowly rising from the top, sticking up a little, then leaning over to nearly fall over. Kate found the whole thing funny. Or maybe she found my excuse that this is an important scientific experiment funny. Or maybe she just found me, covered in exploded shaving cream bits, funny. Anyway, it was an exciting experiment that I highly recommend.
