homemade sushi and pregnant tamagotchis

I was out shopping for dinner ingredients late yesterday afternoon when I was overcome by a craving for sushi. Mabuta, a high school student from Japan living with my Dad, once put together a "make your own" sushi spread for my family a while back, so I decided to do the same thing for Jeff and me.

I picked up some sheets of dried seaweed (nori), wasabi paste, smoked salmon, cucucumber, artificial crab, avocado, pickled ginger. Used my rice cooker (gift from my parents many years ago) to make some Japanese rice, then used this recipe to make sushi rice. I didn't have any rice vinegar so used white vinegar instead; I figured my Mom had always used plain vinegar, so it would probably turn out all right.

And it did! I could have added other ingredients (egg, eel, etc.) but I figured we had enough to make an interesting sushi hand roll. For those that have never had these, the basic idea is to lay out a sheet of nori, put on some sushi rice, then add whatever fillings you'd like, roll it all up inside the nori. Then I dip the roll in a mixture of shoyu (soy sauce) and wasabi.

Yummmmmmm.



For those who have been dying to know, the tamagotchi given to me by my nieces did indeed survive. Sam was a tad spoiled with ice cream, but this time I was careful not to overdo it. When he got to a certain age, Sam was able to start giving and receiving presents with other tamagotchis as well as play games with them.

Sam was not a good gift giver in the beginning, I'm embarrassed to say. While Annie's and Sara's tamagotchis graciously gave Sam gifts of balloons, flowers and cake, Sam was not as generous.

"So what did he give you?" I remember asking excitedly the first time he gave their tamagotchis anything.

After a pause, Sara looked up. "Um...a piece of poo."

I was mortified, but Sara reassured me that sometimes the tamagotchis gave bad presents as well as good. I gave Annie's tamagotchi a monster as a present; it made her tamagotchi cry. One of the most interesting gifts was a wig, given to me by Sara's tamagotchi. A WIG?!? Go figure. Anyway, Sam quite liked it and enjoyed wearing it for fun, preening and walking back and forth; I thought he looked quite dashing, and it matched his tiny moustache.

One day an odd spiderish creature appeared on my screen and talked to Sam. My nieces had already prepped me...this was the Matchmaker. A few minutes later, a female Tamagotchi (I assumed female because she had big lips) appeared, and I was prompted to either choose or reject her love for Sam.

I accepted, of course, and after a heart blossomed between Sam and his new love, the screen suddenly went dark. Then miniature fireworks sprayed across the artificial night, and a moment later...

TA-DAAA!!! Sam had a brand-new baby boy by his side! His partner and the matchmaker had fled; their work was apparently done.

I had no idea it was so easy. ;-)

But from niece prep, I knew that poor Sam's days were now numbered a la Logan's Run. I comforted myself with the knowledge that Sam would at least have a few joyous days with his offspring: eating together, playing together, offloading bodily waste together.

This morning I turned on the lights in their tamagotchi world...and Sam was gone! Only the wee one was left, crying piteously. I fed him and named him Splat.

Fare thee well, my dear Sam. We had good times together. May you wear your wig in peace.

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I've added a Flickr "random photo badge" to the navigation menu on the left. In theory, you should see three different photos each time you load the page.
31 more days until we get the house.
One (1) more day until Walter and I go see the Lord of the Rings One-Man Show!

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