I’ve been obsessed with nori rolls lately. I got the idea from Cathy Erway’s delightful book, The Art of Eating In: How I Learned to Stop Spending and Love the Stove, which I reviewed for Bookslut about a month ago. After this long winter, I’ve been craving crunch, and veggies, or maybe there’s something in the seaweed that my body craves, but it’s been nori rolls for lunch for a couple of weeks now.

The thing is, nori rolls are actually quite easy. I like the rice warm, so I either make up a fresh batch in the rice cooker, or simply scoop out about a rice-bowl’s worth of leftover rice, add some rice vinegar, and heat it in the microwave. Then spread it out on the nori sheet, and add whatever is around. For a while, I was eating leftover steak, cucumber, and scallion nori rolls. Lateley, I’ve been making a little salmon salad with my near-miss Costco salmon then adding a few slices of my homemade pickled oyster mushrooms (sadly, I’ve run out of these. Thank goodness spring is on its way), some cucumber for crunch, slices of pickled ginger, and a generous sprinkle of chopped cilantro. Roll it all up, slice, add a sliced orange, and it’s a nice lunch. Filling but mostly veg and grain (since the Someone doesn’t eat veggies, I try to load up at lunch). And nice. Pretty. I think it’s good to have a nice-looking meal. It cheers a person up, especially a person who is beginning to worry about the freelance life. Look, doom is not at hand. It’s a lovely lunch!

I’d also think this wouldn’t be a bad choice if you had to go into an office. Not difficult to pack, you can always slice it up in the lunch room or break room, and there you go, nice clean food you made yourself, that didn’t cost you eight bucks. (One reason I often brown-bagged, not only do I like my own food better most of the time, but I’m cheap.)