Shelton Sushi!

   One Saturday afternoon, my husband Pete and I decided to make our own sushi.  We have lived in Japan for over a year now, so we thought we could try and make brown rice sushi rolls ourselves.  It seemed like it would be a fun way to spend an afternoon.  So as I normally do, I started planning in advance.  As soon as I came up with the idea I started buying all the stuff I would need.  I even made sure I got the ingredients for spicy sauce.  I also I got the expensive nori which turned out to be a bad idea.   I got everything for this sushi day.  Salmon, tuna, octopus, and of course avocado.  I even got Japanese cucumbers instead of normal cucumbers.  It turns out they are not that good.  Next time I will use normal ones.

   I was so excited to make sushi.   A couple of years ago Pete got me a few cook books for Valentines day.  One of them was a Sushi book, and I finally got to use it!  I read the entire thing trying to get my bearings on the jap stuff, and I thought I had done a pretty good job!  I told Pete I was gonna kick his ass in Sushi making!  His answer went something like, How many girl sushi chefs are there?  
   Although I was was excited to make the sushi I was even more excited to use all my plates!  I got so may cute plates for my Engagement shower, and I finally got to use them, including my sushi plate set.  I couldn't be more excited about it!  Until I had to wash all the dishes.  Then I wished we ate on paper plates.  Now I know why my mom always made us eat on paper plates when my friends came over.  Doing dishes really sucks!  Not to mention I'm not that good at it.  I get water all over the place and the dog usually stands behind me and licks the water from the floor.
   The most time consuming part of this process was the rice.  And I truly mean process.  You need to make this sauce with sugar and rice vinegar which has to boil.  But you cant pour it on the rice hot.  The sauce not the rice.  Then you have to fan the rice while you pour the sauce over it and mix it with short, choppy strokes.  For fifteen minutes or until it is room temperature.  Stupid annoying.  But before you can do all these fun steps, you have rinse the rice several times with your hands until the water is no longer milky. The most I have ever had to do to make rice.  I could have made risotto and paella in the time it took me to make sushi rice.
   Once this was done we could get the competition under way. I was for sure going to win the Shelton Sushi roll off.  Or so I thought.  Once we started it was clear that Pete really was better then me.  SHITTY I KNOW!  And the sad thing is I had done this before!  I'm going to blame my sad performance on the fact that was  very excited to eat!  I had even bought gyoza and shumai at the Japanese store so I just wanted to eat.  And I figured the faster I rolled the sooner I could eat.  That's why there are no girl sushi chefs.  We just want to eat it all!



Finished product of the Shelton Sushi roll off!

    So our table looked pretty good and I couldn't wait to eat.  I had even made salad with goma dressing( sesame).  I was so excited!  I tried mine first, so I could taste victory!  Then I tried Pete's, actual victory.  Seriously, it killed me that he was better then me!  We are are going to have to do this again so I can win! 
   So I didn't win, and to make matters worse, I got hives.  For the first time in my life the nori gave me hives!  Stupid expensive Japanese seaweed!  Next time I'm gonna but the cheap stuff so I know its made from algae.  Normally, I'm fine from sushi rolls because I did my research and I know that most nori I made from algae.  And since I'm allergic to seaweed no algae I'm fine.  But of course I had to get the only one made from seaweed.  Thats what you get when you cant read the language!