Single Sashimi (33 page)

Thanks to:

My editors, Sue Brower, Rachelle Gardner, and Becky Shingledecker, for being such an awesome team and making this book the best it can be.

My agent, Wendy Lawton, for being my cheerleader and mentor.

Diana and Steve Lee, for the, er, fascinating info about what pregnant Chinese women are supposed to eat. Also, huge thanks for helping me crash the Bananaville server.

Stephanie Quilao, for your info on women gamers and startups, for your company ideas, and for being a sounding board. Venus and this book would not even exist without your help.

Sarah Kim, for your info on startups, for great food, and even better wine.

Pamela James, for helping me name everybody.

Erin Kawaye, David Kawaye, and Randy Furuyama, for helping me find hapless victims to interview about video game development. Jon Okui and Chane Parker, for your invaluable help and letting me pick your brains.

To my critique partners and proofreaders Robin Caroll, Sharon Hinck, Ronie Kendig, Dineen Miller, Trisha Ontiveros, MaryLu Tyndall, Katie Vorreiter, and Cheryl Wyatt, for catching every magically healed sprained ankle and every car that transforms into a truck two pages later.

My church youth group and staff, for letting me cannibalize names, characters, and games for Venus’s youth group.

The Seekerville ladies, for a good laugh and keeping me sane, as well as for more names when I was desperate.

Azuki bean ice cream bar
—(uh-zoo-key) (Japanese) Azuki beans or red beans are actually a common food throughout Asia, but the name
azuki
is Japanese. Red beans are often mixed with sugar to form a sweet dessert, sometimes as a soup (see
tong sui
below). I personally like azuki bean ice cream, which is sometimes sold as an ice cream bar like a creamsicle. Non-Asian people often think it’s kind of weird, since azuki is essentially a bean, and no one would make garbanzo bean ice cream or kidney bean ice cream.

Bao yu
—(bow [as in bow-wow]-you) (Cantonese) dried abalone, often used to flavor long-simmered soups.

Cantonese
—the dialect of southern China (as opposed to Mandarin, the dialect of northern China).

Daikon radish
—(die-cone) (Japanese) a plain white radish, very mild-flavored, which is probably why it’s often pickled into
takuwan
(below). They also shred raw daikon as a bed for sashimi (slices of raw fish) at Japanese restaurants.

Gobo
—(go-bow [as in bow and arrow]) the root of the Greater Burdock plant, often used in Japanese dishes. It’s usually braised or pickled, but however it’s prepared, I always think it tastes like flavored wood.

Hibachi
—(he-bah-chee) (Japanese) a cast iron barbeque grill, usually small and heavy. Dad made the best steaks with our hibachi filled with mesquite charcoal.

Kanji
—(con-gee) Chinese characters used in Japanese writing.

Lop Cheong
—(lop-chong) (Cantonese) pork sausage, usually slightly sweet, often used in fried rice dishes or rice pouches. Very fatty but very delish.

Obon dances
—(oh-bone) (Japanese) Buddhist festival of the dead. People will dance in a circle around a tower with musicians at the top. The dances are very repetitive and easy to learn, and it’s a fun, time-honored traditional festival. But sometimes the teenagers who attend will make it like a high school dance, complete with girls crying in the bathroom by the end of the night. Ahh, high school.

Tako
—(tah-koh) (Japanese) octopus. My dad, my uncles, and various neighbors always went spear fishing for tako and brought it home to eat. I only ever saw the small tako, not the massive ones you see on
National Geographic
. Grandma often made
tako poke
, which is an appetizer of boiled tako mixed with seaweed and sesame seeds, excellent when paired with beer.

Takuwan
—(tah-coup-won) (Japanese) white
daikon
radish that has been pickled. I’m not sure why, but it’s always radioactive yellow in color, like it’s going to cause cancer just by standing within five feet of it. However, my grandma’s takuwan was always just the right amount of sour and sweet, and I loved it.

Tong sui
—(tong-swee) (Cantonese) sweet soup made from red beans or sesame seeds, usually served as a dessert at the end of a meal. Some people find it strange, but I
looooove
this stuff, especially the black sesame seed soup, served warm.

Tsukemono
—(tah-kay-moh-noh) Japanese pickled vegetables. My grandmother usually made tsukemono with cabbage.

Uni
—(ooh-knee) (Japanese) sea urchin. It’s sickly yellow, slimy, and the most disgusting sushi ever prepared on the planet. My father is one of the few people I know who likes uni, and he enjoys his uni sushi with relish when we go to Kabuki Japanese restaurant in Pearl City (Hawaii).

Vietnamese iced coffee
—Super strong coffee, dripped into condensed milk, then poured over ice. Major yum.

White Rabbit milk candy
—This isn’t really an Asian word, but it’s an Asian candy that people might not be familiar with. It’s similar to taffy, except it’s white and packaged in smaller pieces than taffy. There is a big white rabbit on the package. I used to eat these like crazy all through school and into my twenties, until the sugar started rotting my teeth.

Camy Tang

“Sushi for One?
is an entertaining romp into the world of multi-culturalism. I loved learning the idiosyncrasies of Lex’s crazy family—which were completely universal. Enjoy!”

—Kristen Billerbeck, author of
What a Girl Wants.

“In Lex Sakai, Camy Tang gives us a funny, plucky, volleyball-playing heroine with way too many balls in the air. I defy anyone to start reading and not root for Lex all the way to the story’s romantic, super-satisfying end.”

—Trish Perry, author of
The Guy I’m Not Dating

Lex Sakai’s family is big, nosy, and marriage-minded. When her cousin Mariko gets married, Lex will become the oldest single female cousin in the clan.

Lex has used her Bible study class on Ephesians to compile a huge list of traits for the perfect man. But the one man she keeps running into doesn’t seem to have a single quality on her list. It’s only when the always-in-control Lex starts to let God take over that all the pieces of this hilarious romance finally fall into place.

Softcover: 978-0-310-27398-1

Camy Tang,
Author of Sushi for One?

Senior bologst Trsh Sakai is ready for a change from her wild, flirtatious behavior. So Trish creates three simple rules from First and Second Corinthians and plans to follow them to the letter. No more looking at men as possible dates, especially non-Christians. Second, tell others about Christ. And third, she will persevere in hardship by relying on God. And just to make sure she behaves, she enlists the help of her three cousins, Lex, Venus and Jennifer, the only Christians in their large extended family.

But Trish’s dangerously tempting ex-boyfriend, Kazuo the artist, keeps popping up at all the wrong moments, and her grandmother, who has her eye on his family money, keeps trying to push the two of them back together again. Then there’s Spencer, the hunky colleague at work who keeps turning Trish’s thoughts in the wrong direction.

It just isn’t fair! She’s trying so hard, but instead of being God’s virtuous woman, she’s going nuts trying to stand firm against two hunky guys. Trish thought following her three rules would be a cinch, but suddenly those simple rules don’t seem so simple after all.

Softcover: 978-0-310-27399-8

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