Asia in my kitchen

I've had this obsession with food growing up, probably because the majority of my youth with spent with my mother and grandmother in the kitchen. My mom loves being in the kitchen. She even owned a kitchen supplies store when I was young. She had everything you needed and some, but my favorite thing about the store was that they would have cooking classes on Thursday nights. My mom wanted to have a big cooking event to bring publicity to the store, so she called Julia Child to ask her to come host a cooking class one night. It didn't end up happening, but she actually got to have a conversation with the woman! It's funny how she recalls the story as nothing out of the ordinary (she does that a lot). Like when she met Anthony Bourdain at the Arabic supermarket in Anaheim she told us the story like it was something that happened everyday. When I got older, I would experiment with my own recipes then take them to school to have my friends taste test (which none of them complained about). But anyway, what I'm trying to get to is that recently everyone in my family is so busy that we don't even sit together for dinner anymore. That bothered me so much, but it was kind of hard. For one, my dad's a doctor and usually has to work urgent care until about 9 p.m. and on the nights he's not working urgent care he still won't be home until 8 p.m. The only day he actually comes home at a decent hour is Thursday. So I decided that would be the day I would get the family together for dinner. I would decide on a type of food, pick out some recipes that sounded good and make a meal. Last night, I decided that we would have an Asian feast comprising of Dan Dan Noodles, Hot and Sour Soup, and homemade Sushi. Here are the recipes I used:
Dan Dan Noodles
Hot and Sour Soup
Oh yeah, I'm a vegetarian and the recipes call for things like chicken broth, which I just used vegetable broth in place of, and chicken, which I pretended was never in the recipe. hehe
And the sushi, I kind of just threw together of my own accord. I started my endeavor at 2:30 and figured it would only take me about an hour and a half or so to complete the meal. I mean, I had my little helper there to give me a hand. My dog, Captain Morgan (yes, he is named after a bottle of rum, but it's only because it makes people laugh when they learn what his name is) likes to help me in the kitchen. He's like my own little Ratatouille, except for the whole being able to cook part. He probably only does it in hopes or receiving some scraps in the process. Anyway, I started to prep everything so it would be ready to use. I seriously chopped more onions, cucumbers, garlic cloves,mushrooms, and fresh ginger than I wanted to. After all of that I wanted the meal to prepare itself. Luckily, my boyfriend came over to help me complete everything. After I left the soup to simmer on the stove, I moved on to making the sushi. Now, it might look easy, but rolling it tight enough and slicing it without ruining it is so difficult. We snacked on a few of the "bad" pieces during the process. I decided to start on the noodles while my boyfriend finished the sushi. I got the sauce ready like the recipe asked, but then it said to heat the wok and I was stumped. It said nothing about a wok in the ingredients list. Then I realized it was talking about the pan that I was supposed to cook everything in (duuuuh!). Poor little Captain (a.k.a. Ratatouille) got caught in the snow storm I created when I spilled corn starch everywhere.

After I cleaned him up, I finished putting the last touches on everything and setting the table. My family enjoyed everything, and so did I (except for the soup. Except for the soup. I'm not sure why, but at least my family liked it =] Well, except for when my brother started choking on it because he didn't realize it was spicy. He did end up finish his cowl though). Here's what everything ended up like: 

Dan Dan Noodles

Hot and Sour Soup

Sushi