Ken and I always make the food for new years. Ken’s mom and my mom take turns on Thanksgiving and Christmas, but we have been hosting New Year’s for a long time, probably because I am the bearer of pyromaniacs and I believe in buying fireworks.
Ken is famous for making way too much food. It’s just part of that local fear that we might actually run out of food, and how that would not only be shame on us, but shame on our whole family, even those that are already passed.
Over the years, we have created our own new year’s traditional food, so the first is the sushi bar. The sushi bar is great for us because if people want to bring something, it’s easy enough to ask them to bring something for the sushi bar. Sushi bars are self-serve, make your own sushi smorgasbords. Here’s some of the items, but basically, this year, eaters fill their temaki nori with sushi rice, masago (little orange fish eggs), takuan, daikon sprouts, hijiki, shoyu-sugar tuna, crab, shrimp, sashimi, poke, natto (eww – stinky), cucumber, special sauce (honey, mayo, sesame seeds), special tako (chopped tako tentacles with mayo and masago) and mizuna namasu (mizuna greens with a ponzu and sesame sauce). We forgot to cook the tamago (egg rolls), but we had so much food that no one noticed.
