Peanut Butter and Jelly Sushi

Yesterday, I promised I'd share a kid-friendly sushi recipe with you today. I didn't forget!

Check out what I stumbled upon on Allrecipes.com!

It's so easy!  OK, so mine didn't turn out as nice-looking as Smucker's did, but Oliver didn't seem to mind.

First, use a rolling pin and flatten out a piece of bread.  If you don't do a good job here, the bread won't roll very well and will crack.

Then, spread some peanut butter onto the flattened slice of bread.  Spread some jelly or jam on top of the peanut butter. Your rolls will look cuter if you use a dark jelly. I made these last time with apricot jam, and they weren't as cute because there was no contrast. Cut off the crusts, and then roll up your bread (starting with a long side). Your roll should look something like this:

Slice your roll into six pieces and set them on a plate.  Look how cute!

We have some toddler monkey chopsticks that my in-laws gave us for Oliver. He loves them. He used them for two pieces of sushi before setting them aside and just using his hands.

The cutest part? When he was all done, he asked me for "more peanut butter jelly sushi."

Meatless Monday: Vegetable Sushi Rolls

Sushi is so cheap to make at home. It's surprisingly easy as well.

I know some people think of sushi and associate it with raw fish. It's true that a lot of sushi is made with raw fish--but not all. My best friend has worked at a lot of sushi restaurants, and when I go visit her, I order cucumber rolls. They're just sushi rolls stuffed with rice and cucumber, and they're sometimes sprinkled with sesame seeds. At a restaurant, they cost about $4 for a roll (6 pieces), but at home, they cost about 50 cents for the same amount.

Andrew and I started to make our own at home because it's a fun meal that's crazy inexpensive. We have date nights at home once or twice a week. On those nights, we make dinner just for the kids, and once they're in bed, we make a special dinner for ourselves.

Before Andrew even gets home from work, we make rice. We are so lucky to have a great rice maker that we got as a wedding gift from my in-laws. I don't normally advocate for spending extra money for having the best of anything (like, who really cares if your ice cream scoop or duster is top of the line or not?), but this rice maker has made a world of difference for us. We have rice with a lot of our meals because all we have to do is mix rice with water and push a button. That's it. It's so easy that we just have Oliver make the rice. Seriously. It has settings for brown rice, white rice, sushi rice, etc. You just tell it whether or not you've washed the rice first, and it changes the cooking accordingly. Love it.

                                              

Here's Oliver setting the rice cooker. It plays "Twinkle, Twinkle," when it starts and finishes, which Oliver sings along to. Oh, and it has a "keep warm" setting and an "extended keep warm setting," which lets us make our rice hours in advance.    

                                      

Alright, rice is cooking!  Now let me go through a list of everything you need. Our regular grocery store sells both seaweed and wasabi (optional) in the Asian section. While it's still fairly inexpensive there, you can certainly get it for much cheaper at an Asian grocery store.


Ingredients:
One package of roasted seaweed
Here's what we use. It costs less than $2 and lasts for 2-3 dinners, depending how hungry we are:

2 cups sushi rice (regular white rice will be fine; it just won't be as sticky)
Vegetables sliced long and thin
We used my favorite, sliced cucumber, as well as sliced avocado, slices of fried tofu, and some cooked eggs:

Soy sauce for dipping
Optional: sesame seeds, wasabi, and fresh ginger

Making Sushi

Here comes the fun part!

From Bogey to Eagle and Back

Bath & Body Works hosted a free Spa Event today. It's the third or fourth year in a row I've gone. I just can't pass up free giveaways. Sad, but true.

Aminta and I got up early and met at Starbucks for a quick breakfast. After I polished off my blueberry scone and double soy latte, we headed off for our freebies. Our first station was the makeover station. An older woman was already seated, and the makeup artist was painting away. We stood in line for two, five, ten, fifteen, twenty minutes for our turn. The line next to us was moving at about 4 times the speed. I figured, it's OK, it's free! And I'm going to get quite the free makeover!

Nope. After the woman ahead of us was finally made up right, a boss lady came by and lectured our makeup artist for taking too long. "Vanessa" turned to me and said, "Sorry, but I'm going to have to rush through yours." I got a coat of mascara, some blue eyeshadow, and I was off to the next station.

Aminta met the same fate. She, too, was told, "Sorry, but I have a line. I'm going to have to rush through your makeover." Aminta got some brown eyeshadow and a coat of mascara and was told she was done, too.

OK, so the makeover station was not so fun. The hand station more than made up for it! I have hand problems because I do dishes all day long. When I'm not doing dishes, I'm working with the customers and making drinks and dipping my hands in sanitized water to grab sanitized towels to wipe up from said drink making. As a result, my hands are chapped, and they crack and bleed. Cuts take weeks to heal. It's a bit painful. Hand station lady made my day. She gave me all sorts of lotions and waxes to rub on my hands. In minutes, they felt pain free and felt like butter. Hurray for paraffin lotion! She sent me away with a handful of samples, too. It rocked. As a matter of fact, I was so stoked, I went back and decided to take her up on her "two for $10" deal and got the paraffin lotion and a hand scrub. I'm so excited for my hands!

After we finished our morning of beauty, Aminta, me and our eyeshadows went to Sushi Basho to visit Phuong for lunch. Her brothers were there, so we sat with them and colored a bit with Barbie markers. It was more fun than I care to admit. We filled ourselves with cucumber sushi and sweet potato rolls and polished it all off with some chocolate tempura ice cream. Aminta embarressed herself in front of the customers by accidently shouting out something inappropriate about vibrations, and then, thoroughly humiliated, we left.

Back in the car and in fits of hysteria, I realized I was late for meeting my parents. There house is 20 minutes away from Sushi Basho, and I was already 30 minutes late. I quick called them, and they told me Andrew was already there with Bailey. Ooops.

I said goodbye to Aminta and got to my parents' house an hour late. They were talking and watching Tiger Woods play in the Master's, so I figured it hadn't been too bad of an hour for any of them. Andrew later informed me that "he had so little sleep, he was practically delirious, and that the golf show was the most entertaining thing ever." Good for him...

I sat and watched Tiger work his way up to number 5 in the tournament (tomorrow we'll see if he can widdle away the rest of the leaders). My mom made me some decaf, and we talked and laughed and learned about golf. Good stuff. When Andrew had to leave to see his parents, Tiger finished for the day, and my parents and I decided to play some Wii Golf.

Wii Golf is quite the event at Mom and Dad's. We're ranked by our "pro points" which we earn by finishing under par or landing on the green within a certain amount of strokes. My parents are getting so good, that unless they finish 5-under on a 9-hole course, they lose their precious pro points.

My dad has tried to master the art of the pro-points by keeping tally on how often we land on the green in one shot or two shots, and how often it takes one putt or two putts to sink the ball. I think he's got the general idea of the formula down, and so they get frustrated when they land on "edge of green" as opposed to "on the green." It's really cute.

I played the 9 hole game with my parents. I was winning until the 7th hole, when my mom passed me by a stroke. To pass her for the win, I decided to take a risk on the last hole, but instead, I ended up with a +5 on the hole. My mom was victorious with my dad a stroke behind. I lost by a landslide.

No matter. After all, I was able to get to the store afterwards and buy the toilet paper we were running out of at the apartment. So, see, things are going my way.

I think I'll be back to their house later this week, though, to claim my victory at Wii Golf.

The match is on!