There's a lot of pleasure at each distinct stage of making sushi: the shopping, the advance preparation, the construction of the rolls, the chopping and grouping them together, and the eating; even the remembering of these things is pretty good. In order, the pictures show:

1. The table ready for the off: big dish of sushi rice, Japanese crunchy dried pea snacks, nori sheets atop rolling mats, a plate full of things ready to be made into some quite lame tempura, a plate full of vegetables ready to be sushi'd, and a plate of fillings (sesame seeds, mayonnaise, cream cheese, Japanese pickles), oh, and a bowl of chopped spring onion. The ingredients came from, in reverse order of glamour, Tesco, Chapel St Market, and the Japan Centre on Piccadilly (I couldn't help trying some of their sushi whilst I was shopping and it was amazing - also super value in that it was cheaper than supermarket sushi and prepared by some seriously serious sushi chefs).

2. Pumpkin, avocado, red pepper and cucumber, because I think the colours look nice.

3. The results of our efforts. The niftiest ones are the red pepper and cream cheese ones three rows in from the left, though the semi-respectability of the avocado ones on the far left seemed a minor triumph at the time as it was in making them that I realised that I had no clue how to use the rolling mat, in spite of much poring over of pictures on Google Images and reading guides to making sushi... I like this picture a lot because it shows that even if a few rolls feel a bit skewiff when you're making them, they look great together, and sushi doesn't need to be regimented to be tasty. This was also proven by the four-year-old sushi master, whose strong, early preference for just mayonnaise and sesame seeds proved no barrier to making great rolls.

4. Proof of irresistibility!

For some time now I have daydreamed that I would make lots of sushi some weeks to take to work so that: a) I would avoid the awfulness of the polystyrene chips with everything food served in the institution in which I work (Jamie Oliver, our universities need you), and b) I would avoid the temptation that even polysterene chips hold for me after a morning's travel and work. Making this sushi made that daydream seem realistic, but before that I think more sushi parties are necessary, and some more experimentation with fillings.