Tonight was a fun eating night. We started with popcorn and cocktails, Negronis made with champagne rather than gin. We do not usually have drinks before or with dinner but the news is so bleak that we decided on cocktails and tapas as a way of ignoring the news and enjoying ourselves.

Our first tapa was supposed to be a vegetarian sushi roll. Unfortunately our leftover rice did not want to stick together so we had a vegetarian sushi pile instead-not really sushi but not bad.  On our pile of rice we had cucumber, carrot, and avocado sticks. I made a sort of nuoc cham sauce from fish sauce, lime juice, sweetener, water, garlic powder, hot chile, and a few drops each of sesame oil and soy sauce. Very tasty!

Vegetarian sushi pile of rice, cucumber, carrot, and avocado served with nuoc cham

Next we had sautéed shrimp ala John and served them with the same sauce.

Shrimp with nuoc cham

Next we were supposed to have grilled cauliflower but we were too full from our first two courses to eat any more. All in all our tapas night was successful and fun.