Memorial Day Onigiri Party

Following Haruka's lead (amd with lots of her help), we hosted an onigiri party on Memorial Day.  Onigiri is a Japanese rice ball that rivals the American sandwich.  Making onigiri takes some practice, but the concept is pretty simple.  First, you put a piece of saran wrap on your hand, put some white rice on it, add some filling and then form a ball or triangle out of the rice around the filling.  Finally, you can sprinkle salty sesame seeds or wrap some nori (seaweed) around the rice ball.  Traditionally, onigiri are filled with sour plums or some kind of salty seaweed or fish.

Haruka preparing rice

At our party, we provided all of the ingredients and everyone had to make their own onigiri.  We had some plums, seaweed, salmon, spicy tuna, and then some not so traditional fillings such as Spam, peppered pork, cucumbers, corned beef hash, avocado, and pickled radish.

Spicy fish ovaries

Some ingredients

 

 

Random thoughts

There isn't too much to report these days so we thought we would post some random images from the past few weeks. Kris' amphipods had babies, you can see two of the little guys below. 

1 day old leucomorphs

 

We came across these classy panties for men and thought they were worth sharing. 

"Mens Beauty Briefs"

Kris is teaching an amphipod taxonomy workshop this week.  It is going very well and all of the participants are really excited to learn about amphipods!

Workshop participants identifying amphipods

 Below is a sign we saw while driving...it is a bit small, but the drawing is of a bald man holding up two fists like he is angry at the world...no one is sure what this sign means.  It only says the name of a man on it. Rainy season is here and the snails are invading



Seeyalaterbye.