When we went out to eat I came home full of sushi 🍥 I decided there was no reason I couldn’t learn to do it. Basically, if you can roll a joint — even a not very good joint — you can make sushi. Sushi is easier.

I still needed a few more things. I needed a wrapping matt, though you can do without one if you must. I needed pickled ginger. I ordered some but it never showed up, so I canceled and reordered. Wasabi which is Japanese horseradish. Except it isn’t pure Japanese horseradish anymore. These days, it’s almost always a blend of American and Japanese horseradish because theirs is much more difficult (and more expensive) to grow than ours.

I already have almost everything else we might need from a rice cooker and sushi rice to rice wine and sheets of seaweed.

I bought rice bowls — I always wanted them and this was a perfect excuse. I have dashi powder, four kinds of soy sauce, and a couple of very good — sharp — knives. I’m not going to mess with raw fish unless we can get to the fish place in Rhode Island where they have safe sushi tuna. I can get all the veggies I need plus shrimp at the local grocery. Futomaki is easy to make and the only thing I may have trouble finding are big shiitake mushrooms. Sometimes Hannaford has them, sometimes not. If they don’t have the big ones, we’ll have to make do with smaller ones. The small ones are almost always available.

I hope they have lox because it makes a fine substitute for raw salmon. Also, it tastes good.

The thing is when I got the “Sushi for Beginners” cookbook, I figured I was going to open it and say “Oh, no that’s way too much work…” Except I looked at it and I thought, “I can do that. That’s not so hard.”

Owen had the same reaction. He looked at it, then looked up and said: “I can do that. Just like rolling a really big joint.” It may turn out to be harder than it looks, but I don’t think so. The hard part is about proper cutting and slicing. I can do that.

Categories: #Books, #Food, #gallery, #Photography, #Recipes, Anecdote, Cooking

Tags: #gallery, #Photography, #Sushi, Marilyn Armstrong