An American in the Orient-smores and sushi

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An American in the Orient-smores and sushi for dinner
Thursday night, my friend Bonnie, who is from Hong Kong, China, hosted a “dolci e apperitivi” potluck dinner. Her boyfriend is a Florentine who now runs the family resturant, along with his 3 children. Invited to this dinner were 8 other female Japanese students, all of whom have (including Bonnie and I) in the past or are currently in the same Italian language class. Although the rules had been set and Japanese was “outlawed”, the girls slipped more than once (and even then a few were from Osaka or another part of Japan and were speaking a dialect the others may not have known.)

Seeing this group of dark haired, fresh-faced, handsome group of young women, you’d never know that several of them were over 40. Looks deceive-as these tranquil faces are not just- these are vibrant, smart, humorous, curious, polite but independent women. I am honored to be among them, me and my smores.

On the dinner table we have fresh-made bread and home-made humus (made by our host Bonnie, who surprises me constantly with her perspectives on world history and America, growing up in British Hong Kong), various forms of sushi rolls, rice formed in triangular shapes and sweet dumplings, potato and pork fritters, green tea pudding, my fruit salad and the makings for marshmellow-roasted,milk chocolate melted, sandwiched between two sweet crackers all-american SMORES. At the end of dinner, endless reaching here and there for another roll, another grissini, another round of wine, and the fire is lit. Skewers pronto. And I demonstrate the practice of roasting marshmallows without burning finger tips or lighting the sugar on fire.

Smores become the hit to one in particular, my very tall friend Yuka from Osaka, who spends the next hour between fireplace and the table with white strings of marshmellow flowing from skewer to her marshmellow-sweetened lips.

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