Sushi on the Cheap

Picking the fillings, the fun part!

You know what I LOVE about summer? The tons and tons of fresh veggies!!! You know how I love to eat my veggies besides a delectable salad? As sushi! So, sushi is so easy to make its not even funny. It's also extremely thrifty if you buy the ingredients at the right place. I buy the sheets of nori at the local Asian grocery store, if you don't need to read labels to check for milk (or if you speak whatever language is printed on the packaging) you can also buy your wasabi paste or powder there. I got 50 sheets of nori for about 5 bucks which was much, much cheaper than Whole Foods Market or the regular grocery store and it stores well enough that I can keep those sheets for a long time to use them all up. Oh, if you don't already have soy sauce and brown rice vinegar you might pick them up at the Asian market too as they will be much cheaper. If you don't care about organic- feel free to buy your rice and or veggies at the Asian market too. I prefer organic so I get mine form the garden, the farmers market or a grocery store that sells organic (obviously the last option is the most expensive.)

Carefully rolling the sushi into logs first. Leave each roll
as a log for several minutes before cutting into bite size pieces.

I prefer brown rice- but a lot of people like sushi rice. Sushi rice is stickier but I also think it taste way too sweet for my pallet. I invite you to use a recipe off line but basically all I did was cook my brown rice in the rice cooker with a little more water than usual. I was making two servings so I needed to have at least two cups prepared (plan one cup per person.) I'm notoriously atrocious at exercising the self discipline necessary to follow real directions and instead read several recipes and then adjust them to what I have in my pantry. So I mixed the two cups of prepared brown rice with 1/4 cup of apple cider vinegar and about 2 tablespoons of soy sauce. Tossed it and let it sit in the fridge while I sliced up the veggies. This particular day I stuffed them with lettuce, julienne sliced carrots, cucumber, avocado and mango. Hubby also put some sumari (fake crab) in his that we picked up very cheap in the refrigerated section of the grocery store. And I marinated and pan tossed some tofu for mine. I recommend watching a video on youtube about how to stuff and roll the sushi. Its not an easy thing to describe and much easier to show. I really liked this girls video, had all the details I needed: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgw0ODfWSOs

My knife was really not sharp enough to make clean cuts...
and I cant figure out how to flip this picture!

My husband loved these- but he enjoyed watching me make them almost as much! We served them with the wasabi and soy sauce, it was great and so so much cheaper then buying them out. Perfect for a hot day and a good finger food for parties- just plan on making it a few times for yourself before you attempt to make a party debut as there is a learning curve to rolling and slicing them. I'd recommend a sharp knife!