Winter Evening

Step One: Invite friends. The composition of said group is critical, as will become more apparent. Hunger is a main criteria here, although the ability to restrain ones hunger for up to two hours after promised feeding time is actually more critical. Other useful assets of friends likely to come in handy: taste for raw fish and seaweed; liking for Saki; community spirit and sense of humour; ability to rally behind poorly planned and barely executed sushi evenings at the last minute.

Step two: Destroy kitchen. This isn’t some kind of abstract chaotic destruction, however. This is planned, precise and barely coordinated destruction. Firstly, take one cleaned and organised kitchen. Insert alcohol-consuming neo-adults. Add raw fish, sharp knives. 3kgs of cooked rice. vegetables. Find out that some of previously invited semi-inebriated neo-adults may or may not be mildly allergic to components of meal to be communally prepared.

Step three: roll sushi. Yep, keep rolling. This is where the patience comes in handy; the relative cost of homemade sushi is low, the amount of time needed to make the gargantuan pile of Tuna and Avocado stuffed ricey circles is big. Very big. Two hours big. Here is where some semblance of riot control is essential. Our form of riot control was pulling a second bottle of alcohol out of the freezer, which moves us nicely onto our fourth topic

Step four: Find area of debate. Politics is isn’t an option in the Boulder bubble as opinions generally align. Thus, the chosen topic was temperature at which a Japanese polished rice beverage should be served. This proved an excellent and long lasting conversation, as it turned out, the correct (wikipedia’d) answer is: chilled, room-temperature, or heated. Fantastic.

Step five: Documentation. It is entirely necessary in such ill-planned but miraculously successful evenings to have proof that everyone was actually fed.

Step six: relax. or at least try to. More accurately: find some position that doesn’t hurt to sit in after eating vast quantities of food. Make multiple lack-lustre attempts at tackling the dish explosion, before realising that in actual fact, sitting, lying and lounging is far more appealing.

The next 3 to 4 steps involve cleaning, tidying, congratulating, more lounging, a little bit more tidying, and the planning for the next round.

(Thank you to Miss O’Block for her wonderful photographs)