Cucumber "Sushi"

I'm always trying to come up with new and inventive lunches for Chickadee. I'm lucky in that she will try just about anything and likes almost everything including sushi. The other day I had a flash of inspiration and came up with a great idea. I can't put sushi in her lunch I can put fake sushi in there. What I came up with was a hollowed out cucumber filled with rice, veggies and cream cheese. Here, I'll show you what I mean. . .

First you start by slicing your cucumber in half. Then hollow it out like so. I used the business end of a potato peeler to do the job.

Next, choose your filling and start slicing. I used red pepper, carrots, asparagus spears, rice, cream cheese and avocado. You want long, skinny slivers.

Step 3: Stuff your cucumber. It helps to go from softest to hardest ingredient. For instance, I started with the rice, mashed that down with a butter knife, added the avocado, then cream cheese, then peppers, asparagus and finally the carrots. Hint: If you can't get something through, feed it in alongside a carrot. Works like a charm. Trust me. It's also helpful to really pack stuff in there. The more jammed in there it is the better.

 

Slice your cucumber into little sushi "rolls"

Pack up and enjoy for lunch! These were fun and they tasted really yummy! The two things I learned from this are: 1. Sometimes I have good ideas and 2. I need a new cutting board. (Mostly for taking good blog pictures)

When I look at other blogs my thoughts are usually like this; "Hey, that's really cool. Maybe I could do that." Then; "How much time did that take?" And finally "Doesn't she have kids? Where the heck were they while she spent x hours doing that and taking pictures for the blog?" So in case you were thinking that too, these didn't take that long (like 20 minutes or so), Katie was sleeping and Gus was here. . .

"helping". So now you know and you can relax and enjoy your "sushi".