food obsession: sushi

I go through phases with food. When I was a toddler, I refused to eat anything but frozen lima beans for lunch for pretty much a year solid (true story). Now, I can barely bring myself to touch the stupid beans. I go through months of nothing but peanut butter and apple snacks, and then all I want are carbs for months. For weeks I might be interested in nothing but soups and then, out of nowhere, I want nothing to do with them.

Right now, I'm smack in the middle of obsessing over an old favourite. I can't get enough sushi. Cannot get enough.

I first fell in love with sushi in university. Downtown St Catharines was overflowing with all-you-can-eat sushi places. The crowds of broke university students I was friends with gathered towards them like months to a flame. The quantities of rice, fish and vegetables that were consumed over the course of a couple of hours were mindblowing.

When I moved to Toronto about a year after I graduated, I assumed that sushi would be an all the time thing. What I hadn't counted on was that Bunny was all sushi'ed out from all the late nights at work when his entire team wanted sushi, even when he wasn't into it. So I didn't have too much sushi for quite some time.

But oh am I on a kick right now. Two of my last four dinners out have been at sushi places. I've picked up prepared sushi from the grocery store twice in the last three weeks. Plus there have been quite a few sushi dishes picked up as a snack from the food court while I've been out.

I'm a bit of a sushi wuss. I'm not in love with most raw fish, although I go crazy for salmon sashimi and nigiri. The melt-in-your-mouth salmon texture drives me wild. I tend to go for more Westernized offerings. I like the textural contrast of a California roll. Vegetable maki is my friend. (Who would have guessed that cucumber wrapped in rice and seaweed could be so delicious?) I have a weakness for yam or crab tempura sushi. The tempura crunch and the slight sweetness is just too good. (Also: I'm currently in love with a yam tempura and avocado roll. The creaminess and the crunchiness just made me swoon.)

I'm a little adverse to the all-out crazy Western style rolls. I don't want six different fillings and some weird sauce on my sushi. I like to keep things fairly simple. I don't want there to be too much going on.

If you couldn't guess, I'm craving sushi again.