California rolls can brighten up any day

Published 4:30 am Thursday, June 11, 2026

A mother moose selected our yard again this year to give birth to her precious twins. The family luxuriated for several days in the lush, shaded underbrush opposite my front door. The babies sprinted and frolicked joyfully around the house, enjoying our sprinkler in the afternoon heat, while mama munched on dandelions and stretched her legs. The little family bonded in the sunshine while the sad sibling, mom’s exiled yearling, looked on from a cruel distance at the love she used to have.

In the summer of 2006, my sister and I were 19, and we had just been through our first whole year of struggle keeping the lights on and our gas tanks full while we played the game of sink or swim. We did our best, but without guidance, we made more mistakes than we needed to and learned all our lessons the hard way. We had not suffered the pain of exile, but just three days after graduation had been abandoned nonetheless to survive in a world we had not been prepared for, without a safety net to catch us when we fell. We had only each other to depend on, but that was nothing new.

Sometime in that July, our lives and plans were ripped apart. While we scrambled to find solutions for someone else’s problem and struggled to see a way we could win, we never lost hope for our future or our faith in ourselves. If we had our summer drives with the windows down and the volume up, and maybe a California roll on the console for us to split, everything would be okay. In the summer of 2007, we were riding in my shiny new car with the windows down and the music blasting along Big Sur. Nothing was solved, our lives were still a chaotic mess of someone else’s making, but we couldn’t be happier to be there together.

California rolls aren’t hard to make if you know the tricks, and luckily for you, I won’t let you struggle to find them all out the hard way. You will need a bamboo rolling mat, a very sharp knife, and plastic wrap.

Ingredients for 6 rolls: (great for meal prep for cold lunches)

6 cups cooked short grain sticky rice

3 tbsp mirin

3 nori sheets

2 packages shredded imitation crab (if you can’t find the pre-shredded kind, just shred it by hand).

½ cup mayonnaise

1-2 large avocados, sliced

Black sesame seeds

Sesame oil for greasing your knife and fingertips

Directions:

Rinse and soak your sushi rice in a heavy bottomed saucepan with a lid in warm water for 1-2 hours.

Rinse until the water runs clear and fill with cold water until the top of the water reaches your first knuckle when you touch the top of the rice.

Put on the lid and set over high heat until it bubbles over, quickly stir, return the lid to the pot and drop the heat to low until you see steam holes on the surface. Turn off the heat and let sit 10 minutes.

Transfer the rice to a large bowl and sprinkle on the mirin. Stir for 5 minutes while fanning to cool it quickly. Set aside.

Mix the mayonnaise into the shredded imitation crab.

Slice the avocado into long strips.

Cut the nori sheets in half making two short, wide pieces, not two long and skinny pieces.

Tear a sheet of plastic wrap and cover the bamboo mat.

Wash your hands and you’re ready to roll.

Place a cut nori sheet down with the long side facing you.

Cover the nori completely with seasoned rice and press down gently with greased fingertips.

Sprinkle with sesame seeds.

Flip the whole thing over onto the plastic covered bamboo mat, rice side down.

Take some of the crab mix and lay a “log” down across the entire length of the nori about half an inch from the bottom.

Take a few strips of avocado and line them up just above the crab.

First just use the plastic wrap to help you roll the nori all the way up, then pull the roll down to the bottom of the mat and use the mat to roll again, squeezing firmly.

Unroll the mat and the plastic and use a very sharp knife to cut into 8 pieces.

Serve in sunglasses with an ice-cold diet coke.