When my brothers and myself were young, perhaps in the 8-11 age bracket, we rarely ever experienced ethnic foods, white table cloth restaurants or even market driven produce for that matter. One day in our mail box we received the first copy of Time Life Series cuisine of the world. Wow! We have always loved watching Wild Kingdom and Jauques Cousteau and we immediately gravitated to the Time series, devouring all the exotic pictures of far away place and foods from all over the globe. We always waited in great anticipation for the next volume to arrive in the mail, what great eye candy! On my parents anniversary we decided to cook dinner out of one of the books in the collection, we choose Japan! We had no idea what we were doing but we knew we would do whatever it took to get it done. We read through the entire book looking for something that hit a cord. Sukiyaki! I am not sure why but it seems I always pick the most difficult recipes to prepare. We made stocks, blanched vegetables, etc... The we plated the course just as in the picture, at that point I was completely hooked! From that point onward we cooked many dishes in almost all of the volumes. There were as many failures as successes as we dove into each country represented. I couldn't think of a better way to introduced into the world of cooking and cuisine!