Thanksgiving/Birthday Sushi

We didn't have a traditional Thanksgiving dinner or birthday cake in Arizona. But we had quasi-celebrations every night for Danny (the 21st), Chris (the 23rd) and me (the 13th).

The first night we set out to make homemade sushi. It was hilariously and deliciously fun.


Pre-sushi poses in Chris' kitchen.


Just in case you feel so adventurous as to make your own sushi, I'll give you the play-by-play.

Ingredients: soy sauce, rice vinegar (to season the rice), wasabi (yes, it's in a tube, and none of us got sick), nori (dried seaweed).
Avacado and cucumber for California rolls:

Nori . . . we tried to ignore the strong fishy smell.

Raw salmon and crab sticks (buy sushi-grade raw fish to insure that it's been frozen at the proper temperature so as to kill all bad things!):

Danny was the head chef, sushi instructor and rice-making master.

Step One: Press your sticky rice onto your seaweed.


Step 2: Flip your seaweed/rice mat over so that the rice is on the outside, and fill will all kinds of healthy things.


Step Three: Using your bamboo sushi mat, start rolling your sushi into a roll.



Step Four: Keep rolling . . .


Step Five: . . . and rolling, until everything's wrapped up snug as a bug in a rug.

Step Six: Cut your sushi roll into pieces (Chris made an inverted sushi roll here: seaweed on the outside).


If you fingers get sticky simply give them a rinse in a bowl of water. It's like little sushi manicures!


Step Seven: ENJOY!

Danny and Chris both made Philadelphia rolls, which has salmon and cream cheese. However, they put more cream cheese than salmon and their rolls turned out so fat they ended up with sushi burritos.


To top off the foodie night, we consumed Sprinkles cupcakes. Jenna might be the only one to fully appreciate this picture, but that's okay. We cut all four different kinds of cupcakes into quarters so we could all try them all.

It was a mouth-happy Thanksgiving/Birthday night!