Vegan tempura and sushi from Bio Atsumi

I went to see cherry blossoms in the morning. There weren’t many buses from there, and it took more than one hour to go back. When I arrived at the bus terminal near the train station, it was over 12:00. I didn’t feel like preparing lunch at home, so I went to Bio Atsumi to look for ready-to-eat food. This time, I bought inarizushi and kakiage.

Inarizushi is sushi rice stuffed in deep-fried tofu skins. Since tofu skins are sometimes flavored with dried-bonito broth, inarizushi is not always vegan. But the one sold in Bio Atsumi is vegan as the tofu skins are flavored with soy sauce, sugar, sweet cooking rice wine, and salt.

Kakiage is a kind of tempura with mixed vegetable strips, shrimps, etc. Bio Atsumi has two kinds of vegan kakiage. One of them contains carrot, onion, and leek strips. The other contains pumpkin, sweet potato, and carrot strips, and sesame. I think the batter is also vegan because egg is not indicated as a food allergen contained in kakiage.

Though I like fried food, I don’t make tempura at home because handling of oil is too much work. Today I ate kakiage after a long time. I felt they were more substantialicious than they looked, but the combinations of vegetables, especially pumpkin and sweet potato, were good. Maybe I like kakiage better than ordinary tempura with just one kind of vegetable.