Sushi Party

Tonight I decided to have a sushi party with the kids. Russell wasn't here, and it's Saturday, so we went all out! We made homemade sushi for dinner, and then "fake" sushi for dessert.

We tried to make our own take on the California Roll. We started with sushi rice (prepared with special sushi vinegar), seaweed, and sesame seeds.

We then flipped it over and lined up the goodies for inside, which included sautéed shrimp, sliced cucumbers, and avocado. OK, I lied, it's actually packaged guacamole. I didn't have an avocado on hand.

The kids thought the photo above looked like teeth. Yuck.

And we rolled. Not too bad, but when we tried to cut it, it got pretty smushy. But it tasted good!

Charlotte doesn't care for shrimp or avocado, so she decided to get creative and use a pepperoni stick and cucumber.

In the end, I liked mine (not Charlotte's), but the kids weren't too enamored with their creations. They were ready to move on to dessert.

We used the same technique, but with fruit rollups instead of seaweed, rice crispy treats* instead of sushi rice (this time I cooked it correctly), and candy inside.

*For those of you in England, fruit rollups are sheets of dried fruit (with plenty of high fructose corn syrup in them), and rice crispy treats are a gooey mess made from butter, marshmallows, and rice breakfast cereal.

My concoction included gummy worms and twizzlers (red and yellow licorice).

I took the first bite to try it out. Ugh, disgusting, but in a good way. We all had about one slice of each of ours and felt sick. Success!

We decided Charlotte's rainbow roll looked the prettiest...

...but Anson's sunset roll tasted the best. He had Nerd-covered rope and sour straws inside. If you don't know what those are, you're probably better off.

I'd like to try it again with different ingredients. The kids were really into it, and we learned a lot about technique and what tastes good together, even what textures work well together. All in all, a good night's work!