I'm a big fan of sushi and an even bigger fan of throwing sushi parties. It's a cheap, relatively easy way to feed and impress a lot of people at once. I actually did an entry on throwing a sushi party last year you can check out by clicking the link, so I won't get into the actual rolling process here...
Instead, I am going to share the AMAZING seaweed/avocado salad I made to go with the sushi. (Actually, the amazing seaweed/avocado salad I ripped off from a prominent, vegetarian fine dining spot I had eaten at that week... It rhymes with Bellenium...) 
I made a big batch of glass rice noodles. These only need to be boiled in water for a few minutes total.
I sliced a bunch of organic raw kale and mixed it with chopped carrots, cucumbers, apples and seaweed. I was actually overwhelmed when I stopped by the Japanese market by the many different ways to buy seaweed (all with Japanese labels) and actually just ended up buying two containers of freshly and already- made seaweed salad to save some time. 
I threw in some sunflower seeds, sesame seeds, two fresh avocados, and tossed it with a lime-tahini dressing I had in my fridge left over from a few nights earlier (olive oil, lime, tahini, garlic, salt, agave, cayenne, and pepper.)
This is just a picture of some sweet potatoes I roasted with garlic and onion that I put in a few rolls!
Like I stated in my previous sushi post- you can put ANYTHING in sushi. In these rolls I used carrot, cucumber, roasted sweet potato, mango, apple, yellow b. pepper, avocado, asparagus, dates, and almond butter. You just get all your ingredients together, cut and cooked (if needed) and make every roll completely different!
And of course always have plenty of pickled ginger and wasabi on hand!
Best part is all the cooking is done by the time people come over and you can just enjoy and eat rolls until you all burst!
I have a lovely and impressive friend, Jesse Silver, who recently teamed up with other lovely and impressive women to start the online magazine, Betty Does.Betty Does is a new San Francisco collective publication celebrating women and their work. I had been following their posts and reading their interviews since they began a few months ago, so to say I was thrilled and flattered beyond belief when Jesse asked me to be her first interviewee is an understatement.She asked to interview me about my cake making, food blogging, and acting, and we decided it would be fun to make a cake in the process. Since the lovely and impressive Betty photographer, Margo Moritz, was also coming over to document the interview, I offered to make them both dinner as well...
Like so many people out there, Jesse has a gluten intolerance so I decided to recycle an old idea I had of using shreddings of zucchini for a pasta rather than wheat noodles.
I made a vegan pesto by blending raw cashews I had soaked overnight with a few handfuls of organic basil, several cloves of garlic, a squeezed lemon, olive oil, sea salt, cayenne and pepper in the food processor. 
I wanted to make some type of protein in the form of a "meatball" for the pasta, so I quickly improvised with the left over quinoa dish I had made the night before. I started by chopping some carrots, raw almonds, and sunflower seeds in the food processor.
I added a cup or two of the leftover quinoa dish I had made that consisted of quinoa, brussel sprouts, mushrooms, spinach, apples, vegan sausage and the lot of my usual spicing (salt, pepper, cumin, curry, cayenne, cinnamon, braggs and lemon.) I also threw in a few spoon fulls of organic re-fried beans I had open to help bind the mixture when it came to forming balls.
I heated up sunflower oil (good for high heat) and lightly fried them on all sides until they were crunchy on the outside. 
I then set them on a paper towel to soak up any excess oil.
I boiled water in a pan and cooked my "zuc noods" for a few minutes until soft and then drained them.
In another pan, I sauteed an onion, some garlic, and several shitake mushrooms in olive oil and then salt and peppered them.
I threw the mushrooms and onions in with the pesto and "noodles" and mixed well.
I made a fresh salad of lettuce, spinach, orange segments, avocado, snap peas and almond slivers and tossed with a tahini-tomato dressing. 
The Betties seemed quite pleased! Jesse brought a lovely Riesling to accompany the meal and it all made for a perfect appetizer to the Mango-Ginger-Sage cake that was made! (Coming soon in the Betty Does article!)
