I did it again. Well, really, I didn’t have much choice. I had already opened the fish and used half the vegetables. They wouldn’t keep. I needed use the rest before it went bad. I think this will always be a problem. The amount of stuff you have to buy to make one meal is at least twice as much as you will need — maybe more.

We didn’t have a follow-up roast today, so I made miso soup and fresh rice. I ran out of appetite before I ran out of food. Luckily I had Garry by my side to finish off all my extra maki!

If you want recipes, I can give them to you, but you’re better off getting a cookbook. It’s not just the food you need. You also need a variety of other standard ingredients — dashi, miso, dried seaweed, tofu, wasabi powder, ginger root, rice wine. Unless you are already Japanese, you probably don’t stock these normally, so you’d need to buy or order them. I bought the book first, then figured out what I would need.

What you DON’T need is a rolling mat. Other than keeping rolls from sticking to the cutting board — which you can easily do with a damp paper towel or a piece of wax paper — they don’t serve any purpose and I notice they don’t use them in restaurants.

You will also need medium or short-grained rice which, for the purposes of making maki rolls or sushi, you will not rinse so that stays sticky. Brown rice doesn’t work for this kind of food, but the food is really healthy. You can eat a lot and not feel like you’ve pigged out.

Also, unless like me you are a pottery junkie, you don’t need Japanese rice bowls or porcelain hashi (chopsticks). I just love pottery and I have a lot of it. Much of it was gifts from people who know me well enough to know I will never turn away a nice piece of pottery. I will always find room for it.

And that is the other reason I don’t have cats. Dogs may chew up the coffee table, but they won’t leap onto shelves so all the irreplaceable antique pottery crashes to the ground.

I did buy the rice bowls and I should regret it — but I love them. They are so shiny they always look wet. So bright and colorful. A perfect size for soup or rice — and the sound of porcelain hashi tapping on porcelain rice bowls tickles my pottery collector’s brainwaves.

You don’t need them. I didn’t need them, but I love them.

Tomorrow, it’s back to other kinds of food. I have leftover lamb which will become lamb stew. I think we are maki-ed out for the now and besides, I ran out of full-sized seaweed wrappers. Until they arrive next week, it’s time to try other entrees. I’m pondering making ginger chicken.

I have fresh ginger root waiting for me!

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

Tags: #Photography, cookbooks, Marilyn Armstrong, recipe, sushi