Celebrated love and went with S to Shiki last night, drank the sake sampler because they were out of Yebisu beer, and ate more than enough unagi to satiate my appetite. When I tell people unagi is barbequed eel they look at me like I told them I like to eat slugs or something. I don't eat slugs.

Food is one of those strange things. Often the people who make the biggest fuss about a specific food or dish have never even tried it. And that just boggles my mind. I will try just about everything except for sea urchin, which the woman at Shiki always offers me with a big grin, because she likes me and because I have ordered the sweet shrimp more than once. The sweet shrimp comes on two separate plates, half on a sushi brick, and half tempura battered and fried. The part that is sushi is just the shrimp meat, sweet, creamy, delicious. Dip it in wasabi and oh yes, there goes the top of my head. The part that's battered and fried is the front end of the shrimp, legs and antennas and shell, and it's quite edible, all of it. But I have smelled the sea urchin, and it does not strike me as something I wish to acquaint with my tongue.

I look at what some people eat and usually they have no notion of how to cook things from scratch. They think olives are fruit like peaches, just pick them off the tree, pack them in the can, get them at the grocery store. They've never been poked by an artichoke plant, never even wondered who thought, at one time, "let's boil that thistle for an hour and eat it." Or snails, for that matter...

Fear of starvation is the mother of gourmet cooking. Just add pine nuts or sesame seeds.