Happy Valentine's Day!

Valentine's Day is a relatively low-key holiday at our home.  We usually don't do anything too extravagant  but do like to do at least a little something special.  Last night I made some banana chocolate chip cookies (one of Tom's favorites), but since I made a triple batch, Ann and I delivered some cookies to a few friends from church this morning.  This evening, we dropped Ann off with my parents so Tom and I could have a little date.  I tried to think of what I wanted to make to eat, and I'm not sure how I came up with the idea, but I decided to surprise Tom by making sushi!  He loves sushi, so I figured he'd like it (or at least like that I was willing to attempt it).

Ann watching Veggie Tales clips on you-tube while I got everything ready to take her over to my parents' house (she had a great time playing with Grandma and Grandpa)

All of my sushi-making ingredients.  I decided to make this super simple on myself and made a california roll, which just uses imitation crab meat instead of fish.

I looked up online about how to make sushi rice and how to assemble the rolls.  Here's the nori sheet (seaweed) with the rice and sesame seeds.

Rice and nori flipped and filling added

All rolled up (it's helpful that our old place mats are really more sushi mats than place mats...they worked great for rolling up sushi, they're not so great for keeping your table clean while eating)

The finished product!  I think they look pretty good for a first attempt.

I also made miso soup to go with the sushi (I've made it a number of times before).  I had Tom close his eyes until he was sitting down in front of this.  I definitely succeeded in surprising him!  And the sushi actually turned out really good.  Part of why having miso soup and sushi was so fun was because that's what Tom and I had on our first Valentine's together when we were engaged.  Tom had been wanting to take me to get sushi for a long time and I finally agreed to go with him.  

My sweetheart :)