Friday, March 11, 2011

日本

Wanna know what I did today?

Just knocked something off my BUCKET list, that's all! No big deal.

My bucket list might be underwhelming to some people, but hey, it's better to have one with a few easily achievable goals on it to make yourself feel good than none at all.


If you can get past the not-the-highest-quality-photo-ever-ness of this image, you'll happen to notice that it looks awfully similar to sushi! Well, the funny thing is that it totally IS!


I had a hankering for some sushi at school today, and looked down in the little refrigerated bin at the student center food court and lamented the high sticker price. Yikes. I'm sure that a lot of guys I know would wonder at the rare, special treat of sushi -- all that money for some dinky pieces of vegetables wrapped in a few specks of rice and seaweed? When you put it that way, it does seem a bit silly. At least that junk should be cheaper! That delicious, exotic, sort of Japanese junk.

And do you know what Publix does to you when you're jonesing for some sushi? It puts all the ingredients you need on the end of an aisle, just waiting to be tossed in your green basket. They were a bit heavy for my weak little arms but after lugging them to the car (denying the bag boy's offer to carry them for me! I don't understand myself) and driving home, I was sushi master. Call me Lara Sensei.

(Don't do that. It's pretty rude to call yourself sensei, as I recall from randomly taking Japanese my freshman year of college.)

(Sidenote: my name in Japanese is just the same letter repeated twice. ララ! Ra-ra! Hahaha.)

Anyways... thanks to this glamorous website's help, I was well on my way to making my own sushi! I just put my favorite things inside of it, we can call it the Lara roll. I sliced up some imitation crab meat, cucumber, and avocado. I totally would've put carrot but this was the first time in millenia that we were out of carrots! What a weird day.


Making the sushi rice was super easy, thanks to my (roommate's) handy dandy rice cooker! I stink at cooking rice in a pot like a normal person. I failed and bought rice vinegar instead of rice wine vinegar -- how could anyone possibly mistake the two? -- and somehow it tasted okay anyways. I am not a master at rolling sushi yet, or not tearing the nori sheets, or not spilling rice everywhere so they will stick to everything in creation, etc. But I still have a lot of rice left in my jar and plenty of motivation to get better at this.

If anyone would like to buy me a bamboo mat to roll sushi on so I stop using cling wrap like a total trashbag, please don't hesitate. I'm putting on my eventual wedding registry if this doesn't happen. No matter what, though, don't be afraid of sushi! We can make it together and celebrate the wonderful world of Japanese food!


And speaking of Japan, please continue to lift them in prayer. It was a hard sight just for me today to see a classmate who is studying abroad here in America checking his phone constantly during class to see what was going on at home for him. Our tiny world has to stick together!

Until next time... (I hope Google Translate doesn't butcher this too badly)

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