Xanthantastic!

One of my coworkers is Japanese. At least her mom is, and she grew up there, so that's Japanese enough for me. As you can imagine, I am constantly bugging her about food. So, when she went home for the New Year holiday, she took pictures of her meals for me. Her relatives laughed, but for me, that slideshow when she got back was better than all the porn on all the internets in all the universe. It's not like she went to Michelin-starred establishments either. Lots of home cooking and real-deal meals with friends and family. 

Of course, she also brought back goodies to share with the entire crew.

Mostly sweet, some salty, all packaged in brightly colored, easy-rip plastic. The big fun of the pile, though, was the make-it-yourself candy sushi kit.

As you can see, the instructions were, shall we say, inscrutable, so it was good I had my friend to help.

There was a little packet of powder for each ingredient and a big block of black chewing gum to roll out into sheets of "nori". It was like Wylie Dufresne designed a chemistry set for kids.

According to the instructions, we measured out water into the mixing tray and added the mysterious powders, the most fun of which had to be making the "ikura", a technique with which we are both familiar thanks to Top Chef.

From there, it was easy to assemble. Probably easier than real sushi with sticky rice. Unfortunately, I got involved with some work thing and had to let ML finish, but the results were worth it. If I had done the assembly, they might have looked as bad as they tasted!