Sushi!

Remember how there were camels on Northrup Mall last Thursday, and then on Friday there were those cute plastic bottle flowers, and how I wondered what Monday would hold in store? Turns out nothing, because I am not there! I am on vacation!

So far, my vacation has been spent at home, doing exciting thing like cleaning my apartment and washing my couch cushion covers. Jealous, aren't you?

For fun, last night D and I took a Sushi making class. It was offered through community ed at one of the local high schools. It felt like going back in time as we passed rows of lockers and entered the home ec kitchen. Ah...memories.

The first couple hours of the class were spent preparing the ingredients for the sushi while the rice cooked and seasoned. Sushi means "seasoned rice", not raw fish as many people think. There was no raw fish in the sushi we prepared last night. We did have: avocado, cucumber, carrot, daikon radish, grated spicy ginger, roe, sesame seeds, asparagus, mushrooms, eel, spinach, imitation crab, shrimp, chicken, egg, some kind of spicy gourd....and SPAM.

Yup! Spam. Apparently, in Guam, Spam Sushi is the best selling sushi roll. Of course, I was not surprised having visited the Spam Museum last summer and learning all about the amazing canned meat. The instructor asked for someone "brave" to cut up the spam and brown it. I was more than happy to volunteer. I was actually a bit surprised at how leery many of the people in class were on the Spam. It's quite popular in Hawaii.

Personally, I wanted to avoid the shrimp at all costs. I do not like shrimp. I do not like the taste and I really don't like the texture. Yet, 45 minutes later I found myself cutting shrimp in half and passing them to D to "de-vein". If you know what de-veining is, you'll know why it gave me the heebie-jeebies. Actually, just TOUCHING the shrimp gave me the heebie-jeebies. You should all be quite proud of me for going out of my comfort-zone to slice up the little critters. I know I am.

There were over 20 people in the class and once the ingredients were set we had 8 trays like this of ingredients.

As our instructor said, sushi is to the Japanese what a sandwich is to us. We have bread...they have rice and seaweed. You can put whatever you want in it.

Finally, we were ready to get to work and make some sushi rolls!

D lays the rice across his seaweed...

After selecting some fine ingredients, the sushi is ready to be rolled.

The rolling was the tricky part.


Here is my first roll...ready to be sliced. Check out that cucumber!

I headed over to the cutting station, and voila! Our first sushi rolls!

We could make as many rolls as we wanted and take some home with us. I made a special "breakfast" sushi roll with egg, spam, and mushroom. I actually had it for lunch today with another roll with asparagus, eel, roe, and I don't remember what else.

I was surprised how EASY it was. Sushi rolls have always looked intimidating to me when I've ordered them out, but it isn't difficult at all. The prep is a lot of work, but having a sushi party would be a great idea. Get a bunch of friends together to help prep and have at it.

What does the rest of my vacation hold in store? At the moment, I am hanging out with my step-mom. We had a nice chat over coffee and pie this afternoon. Tomorrow I hang out with the little guy all day...I'm sure a trip to the park will be in order as well as some Thomas the Tank Engine. Then it's off to Denver for a few days to visit my friend Angie and see the Minnesota Twins play the Colorado Rockies.

I'll try to post from vacation if possible. Check back later tomorrow or tonight for a knitting related post!