Only Recipes, by Alessandra Zecchini ©

Carrot and cucumber sticks, grapes, blueberries and Cape gooseberries, Olive focaccia (homemade) When I was living in Japan I learned to present lunch boxes including a spectrum of at least 5 colours. I try to do this with the kids' lunch boxes now, and these days the  5 + a Day  is also promoting 'colours', which is a good way to make food more interesting. Of course here in NZ lunch boxes are stuffed down the school bag and tossed around, so I could never make them like  these  super pretty bentos, (I also wouldn't have the time in the morning or late at night!) but sometimes I do them for a lunch at home. Now it is a complete coincidence that these lunch boxes are all Vegan (and containing mostly raw food!), often the kids would have cheese rolls and homemade pizza, and often a milky chocolate drink or a drinking yogurt too, but as they have so much milk and yogurt for breakfast everyday that they can do without for lunch! My problem has been tr...

Photo by Alessandra Zecchini© To make the sushi rice I usually follow this recipe , but this time I also added some Japanese dried herbs (the green is spinach and the purple is red shiso, or perilla) and toasted sesame seeds. On top of each rice ball (you need to have wet hands to shape the balls) I put a slice of avocado, soaked in lemon juice. Under some avocado slices I put a little bit of wasabi, and because this may be too hot for some palates, I added a thin strip of nori seaweed to recognize which pieces had the wasabi and which didn't. Avocado sushi is very filling, eat with a drop of Japanese soy sauce.