Sushi-Making Party

 

Today I went to the most fun party ever: a sushi-making party! It was at Mamastep's mother's house, and her friends, family, and family's friends were there. I think there might have been thirty people at the height of things. Of course I came promptly around 11:00 am, not sure if this was a party where you had to arrive promptly, and then I was put to work rinsing the white off the rice and mixing the rice vinegar, salt, and sugar to mix into the rice. I had to rinse every batch of rice four times, and there were four rice cookers, so that was a lot of rinsing. Meanwhile, other people were chopping vegetables or cutting fish, and I flaked a can of crab meat and folded the cooked rice. We had four brands of peach-flavored saki to do a taste test, and we all agreed on what order we would rank them in for tastiness. Finally, all was ready, and I made my first sushi roll!

Not beautiful, but very tasty! Then I made a second roll, and I was informed about the existence of the sushi cutting mold, or whatever you want to call it, so my second roll was more aesthetically pleasing.

There was also a heart-shaped sushi cutting mold that other people used. Here is a sample. Someone else got an even more perfect heart-shaped bunch of sushi slices, but I didn't photograph that.

Check it out! Mamastep made a roll that looks like Olaf, the snowman from Frozen!

Meanwhile, Travalon went out to watch eagles in Sauk. He said a guy near him with a very large camera said one of the eagles was a golden eagle. He got some photos that I will post tomorrow. He also ran into Cecil Markovitch and the Single B-Boy out there, so they all went to the Wollersheim Distillery for a drink. It was crazy there because it was Port Day at the winery. I remember going for the port release party with the Rosary Ladies one year, and it is nuts that day. Cecil and the B-Boy were going to Devil's Lake to walk across the frozen lake, but Travalon had no interest. He came back to pick me up, and we took a walk in the neighborhood, since it was finally a bit warmer out today.

In the evening Travalon and I went to see the movie A Complete Unknown, about the events leading up to Pete Seeger and Bobbie Dye Lan almost getting into a fight at a folk festival. I really enjoyed the movie, being a musician. Is Bob Dylan a jerk? Yes, but did he have a point? Also yes. Pete Seeger had taken him under his wing as an up-and-coming folk singer, and so did Joan Baez, with whom he had an affair while he was living with another girl. In 1965 he was the big draw at the Newport Folk Festival, where he had played the year before, and Seeger told him everyone wanted to see just him with a guitar. However, the movie showed him playing with a number of people, so I can understand why Dylan wanted a band with him... and they were plugged in. It was kind of a scandal, and the movie showed Seeger trying to turn off the power until his wife stopped him. I'm not sure if that's really how it happened, but I can understand both the audience wanting Dylan to do the songs they knew and loved, and Dylan himself wanting to go off in new musical directions. So who was wrong and who was right? I don't think there's a simple answer to that. Timothee Chalamet did an amazing job playing Dylan, and apparently he even did all the singing himself, and he really sounded like him. The girl playing Joan Baez also sang just like her. I'm not sure why Travalon was so interested in seeing the movie, since I have never known him to be a Bob Dylan fan, but the movie is getting rave reviews and Oscar nominations, so it seemed worth seeing. And it was!

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