Colorful Rice Balls and Miso Soup with Onion & Seaweed

Yes, rice balls again! I love rice balls. If I have rice balls, miso soup and barley tea,  I don't need any other dish. I used different kind of ingredients so my rice balls are pretty colorful and fun :-)

I used salmon flakes, pickled plum, dried seasoned seaweed and so on. My favorite is salmon flakes (the pink one). Hands down!

I realized that I tend to make rice balls too big. I should try to make it smaller so it looks cuter but for some reason, I can not help it. Maybe I will used the nigiri sushi mold for making rice balls next time. That way, it will be uniformed in sizes and small and cute.

I also made miso soup. This time, I added onion, seaweed and green onion. It was pretty good. Miso soup is easy to make and you can add just about any kind of vegetable in it so I like it!

This was our dinner :-) Rice balls have flavor so I don't need any other dish. For me, this was very satisfying meal but I am not sure if it was satisfying for my husband :-)

Lately, I drink lots of barley tea. I call this summer tea because Japanese people drink barley tea in Japan. This is non caffeine tea and everybody from small children to elderly drink this tea. (Mostly in summer, I don't know why). This barley tea reminds me of my childhood summer. And I found out that it is pretty good for your health also!

Anyhow, when I was eating rice balls, I thought about Japanese convenience store. It is very different from here. Japanese convenience store sells many different kind of fresh food. One of their popular item is rice balls. They have many different kinds and lots of people buy them for lunch and stuff. Also, they have great lunch box and noodles and desserts! Often times they come up with many new items and it is a lot of fun to go to convenience store in Japan. Sometimes, I wish I had Japanese convenience store close by :-)