I posted a Sushi 101 blog a long time ago, that I can't seem to find now. It was just a description of different kinds of sushi to clear up the widely-held misconception that sushi = raw fish.

A few weeks ago, a friend taught me how to make sushi. Yay! Laughing out loud So, tonight, I flew solo for my first time and made sushi for dinner.

I started off with sushi rice (which I previously thought didn't exist. Sticking out tongue). It's a shorter grain than regular rice, and maybe a little sweeter...?

Directions are on the bag. I just made it in the rice cooker, same as regular white rice. After it's cooked, put it in a flat-ish container. Sprinkle rice vinegar over it, use a paddle to mix it around and spread it out to cool.

I started with the nigiri type sushi. Have a shallow bowl of rice vinegar at the ready, and rub it all over your hands between each piece to help prevent the rice from sticking to your hands. Take a small handful of rice and squish it into an oval to help it stick together. Then use your fingers to shape it into a rectangle.

Then, I moved onto the maki rolls. You need one of these little bamboo mat roller things.

Lay one piece of nori (seaweed) on the mat, and then spread a thin-ish layer of rice over the bottom half of it.

Then, lay strips of whatever your filling is in the center of the rice going all the way from side to side. I took a picture of the eel in there, but it looks gross, so I'm leaving it out. Sticking out tongue

Then, roll up the mat keeping the sushi roll as tight as possible.

All you have to do now is cut!

I only made a few kinds because it was just us. Octopus (tako) is my husband's favorite. Eel (unagi) is my son's favorite. And my favorite (I have the most Japanese in me, yet I'm the honkiest of us all. Cool) is the California roll - crab, avocado, mayonnaise and cucumber.

The octopus, I just laid out on the little nigiri rice rectangles.

The eel, I peeled the skin off the bottom (no idea if that's necessary) and sliced it into strips. My husband thinks you're supposed to pour the eel sauce along the strip of unagi before you roll the sushi. But, I insisted on pretending I knew more than him, so I just poured a few drops on the center of each eel sushi piece after I cut them.

For the California rolls, I wanted to use a can of crabmeat I already had instead of buying the imitation crab that you usually see in a CA roll. So, I mixed the crabmeat with mayo and spread it along the center of the rice and laid avocado strips on top of that. I don't like cucumber in my sushi. Surprisingly, I actually prefer the imitation crab, it turns out.

Last two ingredients - eel sauce and pickled ginger. If you can't find a bottle that actually says "eel sauce" on it, you want something that either says Suzukatsu or Unagi Kabayaki no Tare. Usually, at the very least they'll have one of those written out in letters on the back, under the ingredients.

And voila! That's it! Laughing out loud I served it with tofu that I cubed and fried in a little bit of sesame oil with salt and pepper and steamed green beans with soy sauce poured over them.

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