asparagus nori wraps

go for the shortcut to green: desire paths ::::

It’s green. But it’s not Irish. Close enough for today.

Traipsing around Britain, Wales, and Scotland as a child, my family holidayed often, to fasten ourselves to the countries, to absorb what we could before moving back to the United States. We saw cobbled homes with scruffy thatched roofs, drove along majestic craggy cliffs on the Atlantic, smelled the history in cathedrals, walked through creaky multi-generational manor homes, peered at enshrined yellowed documents and art, and walked through countless rugged green hills speckled with cows, sheep, or horses.

We spent one such holiday on a farm in Wales (my note-taking from 1982 as a child indicates this was Talhenbont Hall in Snowdonia), me spending most of the time cajoling the animals of the grounds to come near. There was Warwick the German Shepherd. There was a cadre of fat, tabby farm cats, likely with no lack of farm mice to eat. I remember the geese George and Mildred pecking around for food, goslings wobbling nearby. The horse and donkey wandered freely and occasionally greeted us at our kitchen window, peering in with sad, brown eyes. I hung around the farmer’s kids, listening in awe as the daughter Lucy gathered the ducks for the night, “DUCKIES! DUCKIES! DUCKIES!” she whooped across a clearing in the woods. And they came flocking for a top off of food and water. We had fresh, saffron-blebbed eggs every morning. We even took a trip down to the milker, where the dairyman raw pasteurized our milk, fresh from the cows that morning. There were dozens of acres to explore and places to get lost in.

I wandered some, though stayed on the graveled areas mostly, trying to find a cat to pet or to spook the peacock. But there were desire paths all about. A desire path is a trail formed from foot-fall or other traffic, the more desired route due to a shorter or more easily navigated route. It is the path created when a downed tree blocks the main walkway. It is the carved-out walk through a meadow of long-grass.  It is the beaten, dusty curve avoiding the sharp left at the trailhead. It is the packed snow trail across a field in winter. It is the connector between one adjacent cul-de-sac to another. It is user defined. It is ultimate convenience. Sometimes shortcuts are best way, more easily navigated by many, an offbeaten trail, sometimes leading us somewhere more deftly than some hard, paved road.

The recipe today is my shortcut. If you are in the mood for vegetarian maki sushi without the finicky rolling, this is your recipe. And it’s almost vegetarian, if you decline the pork sung addition (but don’t! It’s awesome!). I didn’t set out to make-sushi-not-make-sushi with this recipe. It was more a realization: I gravitated to this recipe for the vegetables and nori, the flavors, the mayo, all of the green, AND the fact it was easy and gave me instant gratification. The whole sushi comparison was secondary — for you. (In my book, sushi must have seafood in it — vegetarian sushi seems like a cop out.)

A patchwork of green this is, in recipe and in my memories, deviating slightly from today’s green and St. Patrick’s Ireland across the ocean from Wales, then flinging us far to Japan. Quite the desire path of my mind and the ever-present nostalgia, getting lost in it all.

One year ago: nautilus cookies (very cool!)

Two years ago: oh my darlin’ clementine cocktail and hungarian mushroom goulash

Three years ago: honey-lemon cough suppressant,  big sur bakery hide bread,  and  vegetable slaw with gorgonzola

Four years ago: five-strand braided challah,  mung bean porridge with coconut milk,  and strata story

Five years ago: zucchini omelet tart with dill polenta crust,   date bars,  banana bread pudding with cream cheese frosting,  and  oat and apple cider yeast bread