Typically we go out to eat for sushi. We got the urge to make it for ourselves at home. My friend Dan taught me how to make sushi rolls once when I visited him in Boulder. I've done it once more since then. So this time was going to be an experiment too. We were adding a degree of difficulty because we also wanted to make sticky rice with mango, once of our favorite desserts from a local restaurant. Sticky rice is a tricky thing to make, but I think we did a good job.

We also put some pressure on ourselves by inviting John and Patricia over. It wasn't much pressure though, because they don't like sushi, so they were bringing their own dinner over.

Here is the sticky rice soaking. You have to rinse it really well, and then let it soak for 6-8 hours. Unless you're us, and you really want sticky rice NOW. So you let it soak for as long as possible. I think this ended up soaking for 2-3 hours.

This is the stuff you want. Be sure to get one that has no talc, it's easier to clean.

One of the best parts of this is you get to have your own jar of pickled ginger. I love this stuff, and normally I embarrass myself by asking for more at the restaurant. But when you make your own sushi at home, you get all you want without asking!

The uninitiated assume that the key ingredient to sushi is raw fish. They're wrong. The key ingredients are actually Japanese beer and Sake. Here is the beer - Kirin Ichiban Tallboys. Yeah, they sell the little bottles, but I wanted the big bottles. Too bad they didn't have the 40oz bottles, or we could've been super classy.

Most people would be averse to this item because the name seems to describe a post-acne epidermal state. Not me, I read the fine print - chocolate covered biscuit sticks. These things are deeeeee-lish.

I also picked up some musk melon flavored ice, in bar form. I don't know what the hell a musk melon is, maybe they feed them to musk oxen, or it's used to make deoderant that drives women mad with desire - I really don't know. I was sorely dissapointed to see that it was made with artificial musk melon flavor, and not the real stuff.

Since we weren't making actual sushi - pieces of high-grade raw fish on rice - we picked up some imitation crab meat. This was a particularly good imitation, I've had worse.

In order to make the rolls, you have to wrap them in Noori, which is commonly referred to as seaweed. It's like fruit roll-up, only a little less man-made. And thinner. And no fruit.

Coconut milk for the dessert. I think this is why it didn't matter if you soaked the rice enough - you could pour coconut milk over chilled sand, and it would be delicious. Normally we don't like to use ingredients like this - the thought of all the coconuts being kept in inhumane conditions, pumped full of hormones, and then tethered to milking machines almost brought a tear to my eye.

Or maybe it was because I was cutting scallions.

Mmmmmm, Avagadro. Any of you scientists out there remember Avacado's number?

It's very important to have a hungry cat stalking the kitchen whenever you do anything that smells fishy. Here he poses thoughtfully, but trust me, he was just plotting how to get up on the counter with the smoked salmon.

Here's the sushi rice (different from the sticky rice) ready to be spread out and cooled prior to assembly.

Final assembly. Here the operator spreads a layer of rice onto the noori. Really, you squish it. The stuff is very sticky because we added some rice vinegar and sugar.

Here it is with some cucumber and crab meat inside.

Here is the back-up hungry cat. You really ought to have two for this kind of operation. We were well-staffed.

Here's some on a plate. We were hungry, so when it was ready, there wasn't a lot of messing around with pictures, we just ate it. Note the chopsticks and plates in front of the folks on the right - they don't like sushi...Hmmmm...

Here it is stockpiled in the fridge. We seem to be missing a few beers...

The sticky rice with mango did not last long enough to have its picture taken. Perhaps next time. Same goes for the Sake. We had some, we heated it, we drank it. There is some weird acceleration that goes on where you hit your stride with this meal and stop screwing around with the camera. Sorry about that. Maybe it was the Ichiban? Hai!