One of Jack’s favorite meals is sushi.

It’s great to introduce expensive food to your kids when you have one. You are so proud of their diverse tastes that spending $8 dollars to watch them basically crush a california roll and sprinkle it onto the floor at a Japanese restaurant seems worth it.

But when you have four kids, it stops looking like money well spent for the sake of an exposed palate and starts looking like you are throwing money down the drain.

Still, I want my kids to be adventurous eaters, especially in my favorite area of foray – asian food.

So lately I’ve been making sushi at home. It’s actually pretty easy. I’m going to show you how right now…

Tonight I made California rolls. For those, you will need:

1. Rice. Brown or White. I use sushi rice but if you can’t find it Arborio rice works great too. I used that tonight.

2. Rice wine vinegar.

3. Sesame seed. The black ones look really great mixed with the yellow ones, but I could only find yellow so I used that. You could skip these all together if you wanted to.

4. Avocado.

5. Cucumber.

6. Crab Sticks. I just buy the imitation ones from the supermarket.

7. Nori. This is the seaweed paper.

8. Bamboo roller and plastic wrap.

Cook the rice according to the instructions. I have a rice cooker because I’m a good Chinese daughter. In my world it’s right up there on the level of toaster oven and microwave. Definitely not an optional appliance.

When the rice is done put a couple of sprinkles of rice wine vinegar. I made rice out of 2 cups of uncooked stuff, and added about 1/4 cup of rice wine vinegar.

Then, since everyone seems to be rolling the sushi inside out (with the rice on the outside), I cut the nori in half and put it, shiny side down, on a bamboo roller that was wrapped in plastic wrap.

Next put enough rice on the nori to cover the whole thing.

Then wet your fingers with water and spread rice out evenly on the nori.

Please do not get grossed out by my black finger nail. I slammed it in the bathroom door on one of my more “over tired mom days” a few weeks ago. Twice. It’s slowly turning completely black and half of it has come off already. I heard it may never grow back. Which makes me glad I’m already married off because I’m sure ten fingers and nine nails would be a deal breaker for some.

Next sprinkle with sesame seeds.

Now flip it over. Fill the other side with avocado slices, crabmeat, and cucumber. (I peeled the cucumber, deseeded it, sliced it into long strips.)

You can see my nori ripped. It doesn’t matter, it did not effect the rolls at all.

Next use the bamboo roller to roll it all together.

Finally, using a sharp knife, cut the roll into bite size pieces.

There are a lot of ends, uneven bits of sushi wrap that still taste delicious. Sometimes I can make a whole meal out of them! The rice made about 8 logs. It was enough for dinner for everyone (it was served with some other things) and some leftovers for Jack’s lunchbox tomorrow.

I know it was a good meal because when I snapped this photo there was absolute silence at the table…

I probably should make a comment about Jack dressed at the Ultimate Spiderman, Ben the Hulk and Aaron’s favorite way to wear his shirt, with one arm in and one arm out. Let’s just say I’m just happy they are all actually wearing some sort of clothing for this picture. And that no one is crying or complaining about the menu for once.

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