One of the best weekends/weeks...

As most employees know, last Monday was a holiday celebrating Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday. Some school districts take advantage of this holiday and allow their staff and students to have a three day weekend (and hence only a four day week). (Side note: I've had three 4-day weeks in a row now. Monday Jan. 2 was a holiday since Jan. 1 was on a Sunday. Monday Jan. 9 I was sick and took a day off, and Monday Jan 16 was MLK day. I'm starting to like this situation! Unfortunately this will not last). Since Grant and I were moving over Christmas break, we didn't get a chance to go away like we had intended. We're both the type of people that need to see the seasons change throughout the year or we go crazy with seasonal depression. So for our long weekend we decided to head up to Yosemite for some great scenery and snow play. In the bay area, traffic is always bad. Most people, if they're going away for the weekend, leave on Friday night. So we decided to not get stuck in traffic and not have our first experience this year driving in the snow be at night by leaving at 7am Saturday morning. Grant did an awesome job packing and preparing so that we actually did get out of the garage by 7:12am. I was impressed. Saturday: Drive to Yosemite, enter park around 11am at the El Portal , put tire chains on and gentle drive down into the valley to see the typical touristy Yosemite sights. Late afternoon we drove up to Badger Pass to do a quick mile of cross country skiing to remind our bodies that we did know how to ski at one point. Then we drove out of the park to our hostel, the Yosemite Bug. Slept well. Sunday: Breakfast, then out by 9am to drive into the park for a full day of skiing. This is where my husband is the best. I always bug him about wanting to take to much with us but this time I was glad he packed the backpack. We skied about 4 miles to this awesome overlook where you can see El Capitain, Half Dome and other Yosemite sites. To fully enjoy the view, we took out a mat to sit on, set up the camp stove and proceeded to make hot chocolate to warm us up. Then Grant made us sandwiches-- the best-- start with a sour dough roll, add slices of tomato, cucumber, avocado, alfalfa sprouts, and some provolone cheese. Yummy. We skied out by a different trail, made it back to the car and then back to the hostel for another good night of sleep. Monday: got up a bit earlier, got all packed and left the hostel by 8am. Drove through the park one more time and ventured out on our skis to see some sequoias. We saw one sequoia that had been in a fire that killed it, then way back, like 100 years ago, some guys chiseled out a tunnel so that wagons could go through it (and then very small cars). And then the long drive home. I'm so glad we got to see the snow again.

The secret is in the sauce

Last April my mom came out to Berkeley to visit us. One day after a trip into the city we decided to go out to eat. There was this sushi restaurant that I’d had an eye on for awhile. It always had a line outside and I had heard fairly good things about it. The best being that it is a vegan sushi restaurant. I loved it. Oh my did this restaurant start a love affair with vegetarian sushi. Although everyone just thinks about the sliced raw fish (sashimi), sushi is actually more about the seasoned rice that could be topped with vegetables, seaweed, raw fish, or fish eggs. We went back to the restaurant about two months later with our downstairs neighbors as they were moving out. In California, we are blessed with the great store, Trader Joe’s. (and as soon as we left Michigan, we heard that a TJ moved into Royal Oak or Farmington?). TJ’s has wonderful prepared sushi and one day during the summer I decided to pick some up. What a great experience again… a delicate roll of seaweed, rice, and vegetables, topped with some sweet pickled ginger and the smallest dollop of wasabi. Yum-Yum. And since then there have been 3 other occasions that I’ve succumbed to the urge to eat another serving: mid-fall on the way from school to a meeting at church, Christmas, and this past weekend when we were on the way to Yosemite. Since moving apartments, we found a great Japanese restaurant about a mile away that has great sushi without the line of the other restaurant. Yeah for us! A friend from church took us there while our apartment was still in boxes. This prompted the request for sushi making tools for Christmas and birthday presents from Grant’s parents. All of the gifts have come in the last week (except the sushi cookbook). We have an electric rice maker. We have dishes to put the sushi on and dishes to hold the dipping sauce. We have the bamboo mat to roll the sushi and now, after biking to the Asian market about a mile away, we have the secret ingredient that makes it all worth it, rice seasoning. (a mixture of rice vinegar, salt, pepper, sugar, and other seasonings) And tonight, we made maki-zushi. Oh so good. Oh such a long time to prepare! What a process! On the outside of a maki-zushi roll is Nori (roasted seaweed) which is the weirdest thing. It’s like seaweed leaves, dried, and pressed into 7x8” squares sold in a bag by the hundred. You use it dry but as soon as the rice touches it, it has enough moisture to be able to roll up. The next layer is rice (kome). You have to buy rice that is specifically made for sushi. It is a white, short grain variety that soaks up the rice vinegar well. First you have to wash the rice, rubbing it between your fingers and rinsing until the water is clean. Second you let the rice soak in the water until it turns a milky color. Third, you actually cook it in the rice cooker. Fourth, you let it sit and steam for 15 minutes. Fifth, and most exciting, you dump the rice into a non-metal baking dish, and start folding in the rice seasoning mix while someone else fans the rice so that the temperature will quickly drop to room temperature. (refrigeration, so the book says, is the worse thing you can do to rice, so it must be fanned). For the “stuffing” we used cucumbers, green onion, tomatoes, mushrooms, cabbage, avocados, and daikon sprouts (a different mix of vegetables for each roll). We made enough rice for 6 rolls and ate two of the tonight (each roll is about 7” long and is usually cut into 6 or 8 pieces, depending on thickness of the roll). The other 4 will be saved for lunch tomorrow as we go wine tasting with Grant’s parents. I’m in heaven. Sushi took a long time to make tonight, but it was great to see and eat my new creation!