Meatless Monday: Vegetable Sushi Rolls

Sushi is so cheap to make at home. It's surprisingly easy as well.

I know some people think of sushi and associate it with raw fish. It's true that a lot of sushi is made with raw fish--but not all. My best friend has worked at a lot of sushi restaurants, and when I go visit her, I order cucumber rolls. They're just sushi rolls stuffed with rice and cucumber, and they're sometimes sprinkled with sesame seeds. At a restaurant, they cost about $4 for a roll (6 pieces), but at home, they cost about 50 cents for the same amount.

Andrew and I started to make our own at home because it's a fun meal that's crazy inexpensive. We have date nights at home once or twice a week. On those nights, we make dinner just for the kids, and once they're in bed, we make a special dinner for ourselves.

Before Andrew even gets home from work, we make rice. We are so lucky to have a great rice maker that we got as a wedding gift from my in-laws. I don't normally advocate for spending extra money for having the best of anything (like, who really cares if your ice cream scoop or duster is top of the line or not?), but this rice maker has made a world of difference for us. We have rice with a lot of our meals because all we have to do is mix rice with water and push a button. That's it. It's so easy that we just have Oliver make the rice. Seriously. It has settings for brown rice, white rice, sushi rice, etc. You just tell it whether or not you've washed the rice first, and it changes the cooking accordingly. Love it.

                                              

Here's Oliver setting the rice cooker. It plays "Twinkle, Twinkle," when it starts and finishes, which Oliver sings along to. Oh, and it has a "keep warm" setting and an "extended keep warm setting," which lets us make our rice hours in advance.    

                                      

Alright, rice is cooking!  Now let me go through a list of everything you need. Our regular grocery store sells both seaweed and wasabi (optional) in the Asian section. While it's still fairly inexpensive there, you can certainly get it for much cheaper at an Asian grocery store.


Ingredients:
One package of roasted seaweed
Here's what we use. It costs less than $2 and lasts for 2-3 dinners, depending how hungry we are:

2 cups sushi rice (regular white rice will be fine; it just won't be as sticky)
Vegetables sliced long and thin
We used my favorite, sliced cucumber, as well as sliced avocado, slices of fried tofu, and some cooked eggs:

Soy sauce for dipping
Optional: sesame seeds, wasabi, and fresh ginger

Making Sushi

Here comes the fun part!

100 (Attempted) Ways to Entertain a Young Toddler, Day 11: Sticky Rice

For today's activity, I grabbed an idea from 365 Games Smart Toddlers Play by Sheila Ellison. The idea is simple, but the prep is not. You make a whole bunch of rice, and once it's cool enough for your toddler to stick his hands into, turn it out onto a tablecloth. You can mold the rice with your hands or with measuring cups.

To me, the activity sounded fun. Sure, it would be a lot of work and clean-up, but it would be worth it! Right?

Wrong.

The rice was easy for me to make because I have a rice cooker. My husband worried that Oliver might learn to play with his food from this activity, so I decided to dye the rice a bright green to hopefully indicate that it's a toy. It took about an hour for the rice to cook, and another hour to cool the rice down. We even kept it in the freezer for a little to try to get rid of some of the heat!

As it cooled, I got the play area ready. That was Oliver's favorite part. I laid down the tablecloth, and he started running on it in circles. I thought, "This is going to be great!"When the rice was finally ready, Andrew scooped it into a mound on the cloth. Oliver was fascinated and ran right over! He got his hands into it and seemed a little bothered by its stickiness. I ran and got oil to loosen it up a bit. That didn't really help, but it did leave oil stains on our floor! Oliver watched Andrew play with the rice. He'd participate for a bit by putting some rice into a measuring cup, and he'd taste it, too. He grabbed his rubber ducky and pretended the duck was eating and kissing the rice, and then he got up and left. I'd say he sat there for three minutes and played for about 30 seconds total. Two hours of work... 30 seconds of play.
Here's Oliver running away from the rice activity after a few short minutes:

Worst activity ever. D. The only reason I don't give it an F is because it wasn't dangerous and didn't put our son it danger. It was just a huge waste of our time, energy, and food.