The Zen House, Sushi, Books and a Great Day!

Brother Joshy and I are both insomniacs. He more so than I these days, but I'm quickly catching up.
I always say I'm a recovering insomniac, well my insomnia has fallen off the wagon.
We had plans to drive to Duluth for the day, one of those get the hell out of town kinda mini road trips.
We also had plans to leave by nine am freshly showered. HA!
Come 2:00am we are still in fits of hysterical laughter about silly things I shall never confess to you all,
I think we each got maybe three hours. AND...instead of leaving by nine we were up by nine and left by .....eleven????

Not to worry, we have lots of pictures.
I have four pages worth of flickr images so bear with me
this might be one of my long pictorals and I'll probably run out of verbage
say to hell with it and just post the pictures.

Now we always try to get pictures of the two of us,
with the boy not around we were considering the girls
who work the cash registers at the gas station up the street.
Luckily my friend Wendy who lives nearby happened to be shoveling snow. yay.
Y'all who were around this summer remember my boating blogs with her.
Wendy in her ever lovable need to be in control if you let her does well with the camera.
It's a legitimate excuse to boss me around. And the only time I let her.


I say to Wendy zoom in, get faces the snow will be too much backlight .
Wendy....move over here so I can get the trees in the background.
Move over here so there's less wind. Move the other way.
Now switch sides with josh. and so on and so on.


Me? I look at the pictures and joshy and I are dots amongst trees.
Wendy loves trees. bless.

so I cropped.

I asked to take Wendy's picture. this is what I got.

Now you need to understand while we were outside it's 30 below, not to mention the wind gusts/windchill.



I take Joshy to all the best places. I offered to introduce him to Sushi.
You should have seen the look on his face when I pulled into a gas station and said this is the place.

Trust me I say.

I'm thinkin too bad the car wash is closed.

Now I have no pictures of the first round of sushi. Why?
A. I was hungry.
B. I forgot my camera's memory card at Best Buy
(John the salesman from Best Buy printed us a picture from my camera
on that 500 dollar canon printer,
needless to say I sent Joshy back in to get the memory card,
so I didn't walk out with that printer.)

Satiated we head to our favorite store. The Noble house of Barnes.

Joshy gets lost in Hemmingway.

I love Hemmingway, don't get me wrong, but I had another agenda.

I did good I only came home with two. Well. Then Joshy and I hit amazon online later that night.

Hungry again we decided to go back to the sushi place I wanted to grab a few 2834754 shots
and it seemed to be what we were hungry for.
We tried a tempura shrimp roll. It was a little gummy I wasn't impressed.
I liked the nigiri. The tuna slices were big, the fish was so fresh.

This was Joshy's first time trying Sushi. YAY! Actually he surprised me. He tried quite a few things.
Octopus, tuna, fish roe, eel, sea urchin, maki, and shabu shabu. (and yes he liked them all)

*****************

The Zen House
4147 Haines Rd
Hermantown, MN 55811
(218) 722-9365
Get directions

sea urchin



shrimp tempura roll with chili oil





shrimp tempura roll with eel sauce








Smelt Roe


the green roe is wababi infused.

It was fantastic.








they say you can tell how someone loves if they give you the last bite.
here ya go joshy.
I take care of my brother.



Shabu Shabu
Libby could probably describe this much better than I.
It's a hot pot of broth in which you cook your vegetables and or meat right on the table.








udon noodles
















I'd say that was a leave my food alone look.

low blood sugar joshy??

ha.


The Zen house is the only sushi place in Duluth.
The portions are nicely sized, the fish is fresh, and the service is good.
We'll definitely be back.





Was a great day.

y'all have an equally great weekend.
I'm out the door.

xo