Minnesota-By-Sea

One thing we like about our treks Downtown is that we are slowly getting to know some great food purveyors.  While Mama and Katy had piano lesson, Dada hit Surdyk's for their 40% off wine sale and picked up some bargains.  After piano, we went back to Surdyk's to buy good bread, which turned out to be from Rustica Bakery, the suppliers to Meritage, and a yummy caramel chocolate nougat treat called a ladeedah for Katy!

Then we hit the Minneapolis branch of Coastal Seafoods.  Mama and Dada love love love uni but it is really really really hard to get great uni like you get in Tokyo...so imagine our surprise and delight when we found live sea urchins for sale at Coastal Seafoods!

The nice salesman showed Dada how to prepare it, with Katy (and the rest of the store) watching in fascination.

The first step is to remove its beak.

 Then you break a hole in the shell and pour out its insides other than the roe.  Then you have to carefully pour out the roe and wash it out with water.  It's a delicate process and the man accidentally lost one of our roe branches, so he very nicely gave us another sea urchin for free to open ourselves at home!!!

Who woulda thunk we would have our freshest, livest uni in Minnesota!?  They're from Washington State.