I'm officially on Day 1 of the diet. I unofficially started about 4 or 5 days ago, but I ate lots of pickled ginger with my tuna sashimi during those first few days to make it more palatable, only to discover that (A) my acne wasn't going away, and then (B) that, according to wai, the ginger could have been the reason.
I realized that the reason I was covering up the tuna with ginger is that I didn't like the tuna particularly. Mind you, I was paying $22 per pound (!) for the best cuts of fresh ahi tuna from an outstanding market, so there was nothing wrong with the tuna per se. I recently discovered that my blood hemoglobin is particularly high, probably from eating *way* too much red meat in the last year, so it wouldn't surprise me if this is my body's way of saying that it doesn't want any more iron (red tuna is particularly high in iron, and even albacore, which I also don't like, seems to have a fair amount).
Anyway, I ventured over to the local Japanese fish market this morning and asked what my options were for fresh wild sashimi other than tuna. Geoduck clam and sea urchin gonads, he said. Being an adventurous person, I decided to try them both, and was pleasantly surprised. The tastes (and associations--the geoduck clam looks uncannily like a very large penis) were certainly unusual, but I liked them pretty well and didn't feel a need to add ginger as I had with the tuna. Unfortunately, they're both extremely expensive (the clam was $12 per cleaned clam, which probably weighs about a third of a pound; the sea urchin gonads [uni] costed $32 per tray, and the tray appears to weigh less than a pound, perhaps as little as a half pound).
Fortunately, and to my surprise, this market received fresh wild yellowtail (hamachi) on a regular basis (I live in the San Francisco area--Berkeley in particular--and they said the fish is from the California coast). And it's only $11 per pound! I love hamachi, even when it's farmed and previously frozen, so I'm looking forward to trying this healthier and purportedly tastier version. The market was out of fresh wild hamachi today, but expects to get it in tomorrow, so I look forward to trying it very soon.
I also stopped by the local fish market. I was disappointed in their current selection, but they said they should soon be getting in fresh, local, wild herring, sardines, mackerel, and anchovies. All full of healthy omega-3 fatty acids and low in pollutants, since they're so low on the food chain. I can't wait to try them
