I love sushi. Like, I lurrrrve sushi. Yum yum yum. Sushi.

I love maki. I love nigiri. I love inari. I don’t love chirashi but if I can pick out all the good stuff I’ll love that. I will chow down on sashimi all the live long day. Whether it’s Maguro, Saba, and Sake or Hamachi, Toro, and Unagi. . . I’ll eat it all. Well, almost all.

Fugu isn’t for me, and octopus is too rubbery to offer anything worth chewing. I’ve heard that some places serve sushi while the critter is still alive. No thanks. I want my animal to be dead when I eat it. I’ve also heard tell that in some restaurants raw horse meat gets put on menus, which sounds foul. And as far as I’m concerned Ikura, Kazunoko, Tobiko, and Uni are Japanese for “salty crunchy ickiness.”

Traditionally prepared sashimi is divine, but I’m not a purist. One of the tastiest rolls I’ve ever had was a tempura dipped California roll topped with avocado, spicy sauce, and jalapeños, and then baked to a gooey delicious perfection.

I love the presentation of sushi; it’s simple, elegant, and fun. I’ve seen chefs get ridiculously creative with presentation, from a caterpillar roll that really looks like a caterpillar to a rainbow roll arranged to look like a daisy. It’s fun to watch tidibits float by on sushi boats, and the tiny little cups for sake remind me of tea parties when I was a little girl. When you’re a grownup you’re not allowed to play with your food. Unless you’re at a sushi bar.

Back home there was a place I went to every Monday night with my brother for a couple of years. I loved that when we walked in we’d get a hearty traditional greeting and our seats at the bar were always open. I must confess to secretly having visions of the chefs shooing away other patrons from our seats. I never saw them do it, but then those two stools were always open at 7:00 on Monday nights.

I now live in sushi heaven. I have my favorite places, but I never run out of new ones to try. All of my friends have learned to stop asking me where we should go for dinner because I only have two answers most of the time — gnocchi or sushi. At the moment, I am full of yummy shrimp tempura and vegetable maki. And all is right with the world. I’ll adapt some wisdom from Ben Franklin: Sushi is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.