Vegan sushi and Easter Bunny onigiri

I was delighted to see all your comments about my new kitchen, thank you so much! I’m indeed settling in slowly, finding my way in the kitchen and cooking more and even more experimental food at the moment. I have found a couple of nice supermarkets nearby that cater to all our needs, so I’m more comfortable cooking here.

I hope you all had a nice Easter and got to relax a bit. I’m sure it was different from the usual for all of us. We just enjoyed a lot of nice food, drink and long walks in the nearby forest and seaside. The weather was great and sunny throughout, although yesterday it tried to snow a little bit! I also put some Easter decorations up, as most time lately has been spent at home. I couldn’t resist these cute chocolate bunnies.

We had some fun by making slightly Easter-themed vegan sushi featuring Easter Bunny onigiri. I tried to colour some of the rice with radish peels, but they are not quite as good at colouring as beetroot. However I left the pieces in the rice creating a "David Bowie bunny onigiri". Can you see the resemblance? 

The sushi rolls were filled with marinated tofu, carrots, radish and wild garlic. It was so nice to make vegan sushi after a while. Now I have the required kitchen space to make it properly.

Have a nice week!

Your VegHog

Under the sea

I'm back from my holiday to Finland, well actually already since Tuesday evening. I just haven't had time to write anything here since, as it was straight back to work for me. The holiday was nice. It was great to see my family again and also some snow (yes it happened, and I have photos to prove it). I will write a quick holiday post soon, but now I have a busy weekend ahead again, so it will probably be later.

I now want to share this under the sea themed bento box with you that I made recently as mine and my partner's work lunches. So this box just contained two onigiris, a fish shaped with seaweed flakes and a star shaped plain one, and both had an umeboshi paste filling and nori strips around them. I added some fresh veggies to the box: carrots, kale, spinach, sprouts and tomatoes, and served a soya-chilli sauce on the side. It was a really nice lunch.

What has been in your lunch boxes lately?

Your VegHog

Bento Italiano

You may have noticed that ever since I got my lovely sushi rice moulds, I've been very keen on bento box lunches. This time I gave the box a little bit of a twist by using typical Italian ingredients in it.

I made sure at work that neither my Italian nor Japanese colleagues would see this lunch, in case this fusion would've been too much for them. I avoid these subjects with one of my Italian colleagues anyway, as she wasn't very pleased to hear that I like pineapple on a pizza...

I thought that this was a really good lunch and I would make it anytime again.

So this is what I made:

• onigiri from sushi rice cooked with vegetable stock powder and a rind of vegetarian pasta cheese, with an olive and sundried tomato filling, and basil facial features
• mini pizzas using halves of whole wheat pittas as a base, with semi-dried tomato, basil, oregano and vegetarian pasta cheese on top
• roasted red pepper and garlic sauce with some olive oil and pine nuts (basically a red pesto)
• balsamic jelly
• pulled mozzarella
• olives
• roasted red peppers
• lambs lettuce
• tomatoes
• pine nuts
• basil

How did you find this fusion bento? Was I crossing a line there?

I wish you all a wonderful weekend!

Your VegHog