Since I am home with a Broken Arm and Bored to Death..

One of my favorite foods is Sushi.. is this related to the Volcano? No..at least not until I start doing tempura Sushi.. But if you were ever afraid of making sushi.. Because it was too hard.. It took too much time.. Blah blah blah.. Not true.

First.. I went out and looked at the traditional kits.. These consist of, basically, a spatula, a bamboo Sushi mat and some good luck wishes from the manufacturer.  I thought about several things, one of them being the mess that I would make in the kitchen and my untimely death if my wife saw it.. I thought there must be an easier way..
I went out on ebay (Where else?) and found this For about $20.00 shipping included. My kit did not include the chopsticks or the pasta looking fork.

So, I bought some Nori sheets (I wanted to make Maki Rolls)

Then I went to 1rst Oriental Market and bought some pickled ginger, 15 lbs of Sushi Rice ($23.00 for all of it) Note - Sushi Rice is a special SHORT GRAIN rice.. You CANNOT use long grain rice. It is NOT sticky and your rolls will fall apart.

This is the best kind of rice. The most important part of of making Sushi is the rice. You can put whatever you want in the roll.. but, the rice is the key.
I did not use a Rice Cooker.. I could have.. but this turned out well, so why bother?
1.5 cups of Dry rice + 2 cups of water. Put in a pan and bring to a boil. When it is at a boil, cover it and turn down to simmer for about 20 min.. until the rice is dry. It will be STICKY! (As in good luck scraping all of it off the bottom of the pan)
I used 4 cups of rice.. so I took 1/2 cup rice Vinegar, 1/2 cup of Splenda (you can use sugar if you don't like splenda and don't mind the calories) and 2 tbl of salt.
Take all of the rice out of your metal pan (you don't want a reaction with the Vinegar) and put it in a glass (or wood, if you're traditional) bowl and fold in the Vinegar mixture. This takes a little time because you don't want to smash  the rice.
Once it is mixed, I took the part of the mold to make round maki rolls and put in a Nori Sheet.

From here, fill about 1/2 way up with rice.. and then add whatever you want.. We used avocado, Smoked Salmon, Surimi and cukes. Once you have the filling in.. fill the rest up with Rice..
and use the supplied top/shaper (I used the round one and the heart one) and press down.
That's all there is to it. I wanted put them in the fridge.. However, I was out voted on letting them stay there overnight.. (So I could take pictures of the rolls) and, they were mostly devoured. However,
Here is what the finished product looked like: (Actual stuff I made)

I cannot believe how easy this way.. Next time, I will put two rows of something in the heart ones so that there is something on each side and I will add A LOT more "stuff"  and way less rice. Each roll, as I did them last night, took about 1 cup of UNCOOKED rice per each. (Can you say BIG maki rolls?) My next expedition (As soon as I can get out.. Will be to try this with some fresh caught Trout from an ice fishing escapade and, use the volcano so I can do Tempura.