But, the priority for me was the beach. Back before we worried about sunblock and UV rays, my family would spend the entire day sitting on the beach. We packed up our cooler with sandwiches, juice boxes, grapes and chips and headed out bright and early so as to avoid the crowds. And we would stay there for hours. As kids, Jen and I would, unsurprisingly, get bored after a while and try to find something to do. Unfortunately, even in July, the water in Maine is still fairly frigid. So unlike say, Florida, there isn’t a whole lot of frolicking in the ocean for hours and hours on end at York Beach. It’s more of a run-in-up-to-your-knees-to-briefly-cool-off-and-then-run-out-because-you-are-starting-to-get-hypothermia type of beach.
So, to both kill time and harass her younger sister (look at how efficient she was, even at the young age of nine), Jen would chase me around the beach with seaweed. And not the smooth little pieces of seaweed that many beaches have –the ones that looked like silky green pieces of cooked lasagna noodles with the curly edges. We’re talking giant, slimy clumps of seaweed. The kind of dark, stringy seaweed with little pods at the end that if you squished them, would pop like an overgrown zit and shoot out a nasty viscous liquid (which, in retrospect, was probably just saltwater...but logic is not necessarily the strength of a six year old who is being terrorized by her seaweed-wielding sister).
If I ran too far away, she would then start throwing the seaweed at me. Usually (and fortunately) she would miss (aim was never her strong suit), but once in a while, she would nail me and I would feel the cold, unctuous tentacles of the seaweed creeping across my legs or back. It was definitely one of the most terrifying experiences of my childhood (up there with the horribly traumatic styrofoam Santa head).
Eventually, she stopped chasing me with seaweed as the older-sister urge to scare me diminished with age. However, I never managed to outgrow my paralyzing fear of seaweed. When I was in college, I went coasteering in Wales during an adventure weekend (coasteering is kind of like rock climbing, but instead of going up, you climb sideways along the cliffs of the coast and, if you’re motivated, climb up and then cliff dive into the water) and there was this area where we had to swim for a good hundred yards. I wasn’t afraid of the gigantic one-ton seal about fifteen feet away from me, but I almost went into cardiac arrest when a huge piece of seaweed started wrapping itself around my leg.
To this day, seaweed still remains (as Eric calls it) my nemesis. When I am at the beach and see some in the water – even just a tiny little piece – I will intentionally swim 50 feet away to avoid it.
However, in the form of this nori-sesame salt, I could eat seaweed every day.
Nori-Sesame Salt
Shichimi togarashi is a Japanese red pepper mix. The bottle that I bought has red pepper, roasted orange peel, yellow sesame seed, black sesame seed, Japanese pepper, sea weed and ginger. It has a kick to it, so feel free to reduce the amount in this recipe. However, if you do not have or cannot find this, feel free to use a pinch of cayenne pepper in its place.
3 sheets toasted nori – roughly torn
3 tablespoons kosher salt
2 tablespoons toasted sesame seeds
½ teaspoon shichimi togarashi
Using a mini-chopper or a spice grinder, grind nori. In a small bowl, mix together remaining ingredients and add ground nori. Store in a small container. Sprinkle liberally on food.
This is great on seafood and ramen noodles. But personally, I love it with fresh (NOT microwave) popcorn.
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