Sushi. Check.

In lieu of going out to eat for a date night this weekend, Phil and I decided it was high time we attempt to roll our own sushi. Our adventure started at Publix as we bought all our ingredients. A little tip: don't be afraid to look like a dork and ask the deli person where the smoked salmon is. (And for those faithful Publix-goers, the smoked salmon is across from the sushi area on the end of an isle with other seafood delicacies). Somehow, our smoked salmon didn't make it in the ingredient picture--oops.We opted for a phili roll with salmon, cucumber, avacado, & cream cheese--one of our favorites!

Ingredients: cucumber, wasabi, wine (not actually a sushi ingredient, but key to a great date night), sushi rice, sesame seeds, cream cheese, avocado, & seaweed)

Next, we made the rice. This was actually the most surprising part of the process because it involved extremely wordy directions in paragraph form on the back of the box and over an hour of prep & cooking time. However, the results were perfect, sticky rice, so the madness worked! While I worked on the rice and sipped my wine, Phil worked on his project: hand making a sushi rolling mat (I'm sure there's a word for it, but I don't know it). The mat allows you to compress the roll as you roll it so that it's tight and stays together. Since we didn't have one and didn't want to buy one, my innovative husband improvised with some wooden skewers and duct tape. Not bad, huh?

Next, we chopped up all the ingredients and had the assembly line ready to go:

And then we were ready to roll 

(and I in no way mean that in the Alabama sense):

I told Phil he had to roll the first one since he made the rolling mat, so here he is in all his proud "I-made-something-from-scratch-and-it-works" glory:

In a matter of minutes, we made four rolls:

And they were DELICIOUS! 

Now, Surin's Yummy Yummy and Super Crunch rolls are hard to beat, so they weren't quite that good, but they were fresh and flavorful and tasted a lot like sushi we eat out, which I think is pretty great, especially considering it was our first attempt. 

We're thinking it'd be fun to have a bunch of people over for "roll your own sushi night." Any takers? Also, this is my first official item to cross off the 30 before 30 list, so I'm hoping my other goals will be met with as much success!