{"id":1548,"date":"2008-02-04T14:35:20","date_gmt":"2008-02-04T22:35:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/?p=1548"},"modified":"2008-02-04T14:35:20","modified_gmt":"2008-02-04T22:35:20","slug":"wsj-there%e2%80%99s-no-ham-in-hamburgers-and-other-lessons-i%e2%80%99ve-learned-about-american-food","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/2008\/02\/04\/wsj-there%e2%80%99s-no-ham-in-hamburgers-and-other-lessons-i%e2%80%99ve-learned-about-american-food\/","title":{"rendered":"WSJ: There\u2019s No Ham in Hamburgers, and Other Lessons I\u2019ve Learned About American Food"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.wsj.com\/iraq\/2008\/02\/04\/theres-no-ham-in-hamburgers-and-other-lessons-ive-learned-about-american-food\/\">Sarmad Ali writes<\/a>:<i><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Throughout my entire year at Columbia, I was scared of almost all other ethnic food, especially sushi, which I found weird and repulsive. \u201cEating raw fish?\u201d I would say to a friend in disgust. Just before graduation, a close friend from California said he would like to have me try sushi with him before he went back home. Not wanting to disappoint him, I went with him to a sushi place. He ordered for both of us because I had no clue what the stuff was. He was talking to me but I wasn\u2019t really listening. I was staring at the two wooden sticks next to my plate trying to figure out how I was going to eat with them. But luckily, when the food came, I figured it out quickly.<\/p>\n<p>In the summer of 2005, another friend took me to one of the best sushi places I have been to, and since then sushi has become as essential in my diet as Indian food. I moved from simple veggie rolls to a variety of fish pieces and then to special rolls with lots of different ingredients. I have taken some Iraqi friends who have visited out for sushi but they have found it hard to swallow. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><\/i><\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ll give you guys exactly one guess to figure out who this mysterious character from California is. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sarmad Ali writes: Throughout my entire year at Columbia, I was scared of almost all other ethnic food, especially sushi, which I found weird and repulsive. \u201cEating raw fish?\u201d I would say to a friend in disgust. Just before graduation, a close friend from California said he would like to have me try sushi with him before he went back home. Not wanting to disappoint him, I went with him to a sushi place. He ordered for both of us&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"aside","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[64,97],"tags":[217,293,296,297,267,271,280],"class_list":["post-1548","post","type-post","status-publish","format-aside","hentry","category-food","category-iraq","tag-217","tag-california","tag-food","tag-iraq","tag-sarmad-ali","tag-sushi","tag-wsj","post_format-post-format-aside"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4uks-oY","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1548","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1548"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1548\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}