Ingredients for Your Rolls

You’ll need some equipment if you’re making sushi for the first time. If finding the supplies and ingredients at your nearest supermarket is difficult, try looking in an Asian or Japanese food store in the area.

Before anything, find yourself a sushi roll mat. They’re made of thin bamboo sticks that are bound together into a flexible mat. Also, prepare a sushi knife (but any good, sharp knife in the kitchen works, too), a cutting board, a wood spoon, and some plastic wrap.

For the ingredients for California rolls, you need some sticky rice prepared in the style for sushi (be particular about getting Japanese rice because it has the sticky consistency you need), a pack of nori wrapper (crisp, dark green squares of seaweed), some rice vinegar, a fairly big cucumber, a couple of avocados (or mangos, if you prefer them), crab sticks, and a bottle of Japanese mayonnaise.

Get Your Sushi Rolling

Once you have prepared the rice to be used for your sushi, prepare the ingredients for the filling. Clean and peel the cucumber and then slice it into rectangular strips. Do the same for the avocado or the mango.

To keep it from losing its color, you could drop a little lemon juice on the avocado strips. Cut your crab sticks in half along its length. Then prepare all the ingredients on a plate or serving platter, so that they’ll be ready for you to use them later on.

On a clean cutting board, place your rolling mat such that the wooden sticks are vertical from your view. Add a layer of plastic wrap to keep things from getting messy. If your plastic wrap is the clingy or the sticky kind, face the sticky side to the mat. Then place a sheet of nori wrapper on the plastic wrap and then scoop some rice onto it.

Spread the rice evenly over the nori wrapper such that you have a nice, thin, and even layer over most of the wrapper while at the same time maintaining about an inch of bare nori wrapper at both ends. If you have trouble handling the rice, wetting your fingers will really help.

Once your rice is on your nori wrapper, turn the wrapper over so that you’re facing a blank side. Arrange your ingredient strips along the center of the wrapper such that they’re parallel to the bamboo sticks of the rolling mat.

You can put some Japanese mayo for added flavor. Roll your nori wrapper and then cut the resulting roll with a damp knife. Enjoy your California rolls with some soy sauce and, if you like, some wasabi.

It is nevertheless amusing how the mere sight or even mention of food makes one hungry or feel starving for that matter. Talk about body clocks, how our senses react to varied stimuli in our environment. And my body clock plus that whiff of enticing smell tells me that it is a few minutes more before dinner is ready, and my fingers frantically fidget a few entries across the keyboard to kill the time away.

Dinner is Served

Roasted chicken, ham slices, and potato wedges with gravy to match, all mine to devour, or so my selfish id desired. A lovely sight indeed, what with my lovely wife and playful kiddo waiting up for me to fill my seat. Dinner is sumptuous sweetheart, as always!” She smiled coyly and gave me a peck on my cheek. “Now, tell me, what it is you have done so badly?” And we let out a loud laugh.

I chewed slowly to delight in the different textures of my meal and the savoury dip that goes with it. I could not help but ask myself, what will this taste like without gravy? Still edible of course, I chided myself, but definitely taste worlds better with gravy on it.

Making Your Own Gravy

Gravy is basically a sauce derived from drippings of meat mixed with a coat of starch to thicken its consistency. One can substitute meat cubes, broth, or stock for real pork, chicken, or vegetable flavour. After roasting your choice meat, you tilt it to one side to separate the fatty oil from the thick dark juice which, in turn, we will use as gravy.

Carefully spoon off the fatty oil but leave a few drops behind and then mix this with the dark sauce. Let it boil and when it begins to sizzle, pour the starch that you have prepared and start blending the ingredients altogether.

When the sauce begins to thicken, you can now mix the stock derived from the meat cubes and blend it with even strokes and wait until it gets thick. Let it simmer before serving it with your favourite dishes. This is perfect with red wine.

Celebrate life and precious moments with every meal. You alone can make it special, when it is prepared with affection and shared with wonderful people. Indeed, life is worth celebrating everyday.

If you are tired of the usual chocolates you find in any grocery stores, why not learn how to make chocolate yourself? It is easy as well as a fun thing to do.

What You Need

The ingredients you will need are raw cocoa beans. The best way to find and purchase raw cocoa beans is through the Internet. You can look for companies selling cocoa beans and have them ship the beans to your home.

You will also need an oven, a pan, mortar and pestle, and a grinder – that is all.

The Process of How to Make Chocolate

It is quite simple, really, to make a chocolate. First, preheat your oven to 400 degrees before you roast your cocoa beans in it. On a pan, spread the beans, making sure that you have spread them evenly so as to ensure even roasting. Put them in the oven for about half an hour at 400 degrees. After that, let them cool off for a while before you peel off their husks, a fussy task that will test your patience.

After all the husks have been removed, break the cocoa beans apart with the use of your mortar and pestle. Once done and you have smaller pieces, put them through the grinder, taking care that they do not liquefy. Grind them just enough that you can use the mortar and pestle on them again before they undergo the final process.

In the last process, you place the grinded cocoa beans in a dish and heat the dish over a pan of water so as not to overcook them. The cocoa beans become mushy after you have grinded them in the mortar and pestle once more for a smoother texture. Now you have a pure chocolate, but it is still bitter. Add in your flavorings like sugar (to taste) and mint flavoring (about a drop).

Note, for every pound of cocoa beans that have been processed, it will need about half a cup of sugar, but then again, you can add sugar until it suits your preferences.