Picture this: it’s Crafty Night at my house, friends are coming over in T-no time, and I have no appetizers prepared. What’s a girl to do? I pulled inspiration from the previous evening’s sushi making class, and thought of a visually pleasing, relatively quick snack: lox and cream cheese stuffed cucumber rolls. I feel so grateful that there’s a New Seasons just down the road from me, granting access to local, fresh vegetables meats and anything else to save a procrastinator like me. I picked up the ingredients to craft my masterpieces, and got rolling.

Cucumber-Wrapped Lox

Ingredients

• Cucumber
• Lox
• Neufchâtel or cream cheese
• fresh dill sprigs (or dried dill weed)

Directions

This appetizer comes together faster when done in assembly line format (wish I had thought of that when I started), but looks beautiful when complete. To start, cut off the ends of the cucumber, then use a wide mouthed vegetable peeler to slice the rolling strips. Hold the peeler against the top of the cucumber, apply even pressure as you pull across. Discard the first couple of rounds (too much rind), then lay the rest side by side on a plate.

Setting the cucumber strips side by side makes cream cheese application much easier than when they are stacked on top of each other.

Spread a thin layer of cream cheese from end to end of the cucumber strip. Place a small chunk of lox onto the cream cheese with a sprig of dill. I think it looks best when the sprig is peeping out of the roll, but do as you wish. If you’re using dried dill, sprinkle it along the length of the cream cheese. Roll the cucumber to the end adding cream cheese if the roll doesn’t want to close on its own.

Told you it was pretty!

Serve on a plate and enjoy!