Skip to main content

Spring Roll Fun House

If I haven't said it before, I'll mention it now:

I live in my hometown.  I've been here all my life, except for, like 12 years, when I was off at university, getting Career, and becoming a parent.

And while I'm a great proponent of change, I do believe there are some things that are sacred.  For example, the city park in my hometown had one of these dealies:

Actually, this is the actual Fun House from the park in my hometown, lifted from a website called www.villageprofile.com.

I'm sure most of you can see how this works.  Much like a hamster in a wheel, running inside the fun house gets it moving rather quickly.  Inevitably, somebody trips, falls, gets quite hurt, and hurts several others participants in the process.  Also, risks of getting painful splinters were very high.

It was really good, clean family fun.

Imagine then, my surprise, nay, my indignant vexation to discover this fun house had been torn down after being deemed unsafe?

It was sad, really, like a significant piece of my childhood had been punched in the face.

It was with this mixture of sadness and nostalgia that we made Spring Rolls a couple of nights ago.  Because Spring Rolls look a lot like fun houses.

Courtesy of wikipedia.org
Spring Rolls are very similar to egg rolls, except rice paper is used in lieu of wonton wrappers.  Rice paper is amazing stuff.  Once you dampen it, it becomes stretchy and sticky.  So - keep a damp cloth or a bowl of water nearby to keep your fingers wet as you work with this.

Remember that flat iron steak we'd been marinating in the last post?  Now is its time to shine.  A quick fry-up in a hot skillet, some bean sprouts, shredded carrots, and fresh mint, cilantro, and basil leaves are the only things needed to fill your Vietnamese fun house.

Dip the rice paper in water, fill the items listed above (not too much...bulging spring rolls are unattractive), and roll up, tucking in sides.

This little guy was made by one of my children, I suspect.  It's rather untidy, but you get the point of what's going on here.  The green of the herbs, brown of the meat, and white/orange of the vegetable all press up against each other in a Fun House of Deliciousness.

I am instantly transported back to the wooden barrel fun house of my youth.

Oh, and, consider whipping up a quick, yummo Asian dipping sauce (for me: soy sauce, rice vinegar, sesame oil, sriracha, and sweet chili sauce).

Your life will be nearly complete.  Nostalgic memories and all.


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Go Placidly

My food truck business started back up this past weekend, and from here until November, the weeks will be packed.  Sandwich-slinging Thursday-Saturday and bartending work Monday-Wednesday.  And Sunday, I guess, is the day to sleep in and hide in my house. Hiding out is the one thing I feel like doing a lot of these days.  My food truck's ReOpening wasn't the only thing happening in my hometown this weekend past.  A 13-year-old boy was accidentally shot and killed on Saturday and then yesterday, the police department busted one of the biggest meth labs in a long time. Both are tragic...one is a sad loss, one that will devastate a loving family for the rest of their lives.  One is tragic only because of the profound stupidity/ignorance/addiction of a few people who happen to be living in a town mostly filled with good-hearted, hard-working people. And if it's not drama at the local level, then there's the constant bombardment of news that seems to be vividly...

We Overeat...Because We're Getting Fatter?

Well, if that just doesn't flip conventional medical wisdom on its head, I don't know what will. So I'm reading "Why We Get Fat" by Gary Taubes, right? Chapter 9 is titled "Laws of Adiposity" - much of the first section discusses an experiment conducted by George Wade.  After removing the ovaries from three sets of female lab rats, this is what he found: 1. The rats who were allowed to eat whatever, whenever gained weight and became obese. 2. The rats who were put on a strict post-surgery diet still gained weight and became obese. 3. The rats who were injected with estrogen and left to whatever eating pattern they chose did not grow obese. Obviously, this experiment (with further explanation in the book) linked the presence of estrogen to weight loss/gain.  Taubes goes on to say "estrogen influences an enzyme called lipoprotein lipase (LPL)".  These enzymes pull fat into cells that express a need for it (91).  When there is no estrog...

Fun With Tomato Juice

This blog entry has quite a backstory, but I'll sum it up quickly. In making the mega-batch of Red Sauce, I drained roughly 32 oz of juice from a large can of diced tomatoes.  "Waste not, want not", so I froze the leftover liquid, to be used at a later time. That time was today.  My original thought was to concoct a chili or similar, but then...I had ideas! Searching online, I found a recipe for Tomato-Basil soup at www.allrecipes.com.  With slight modifications (I had no crushed tomatoes or fresh basil) to the soup, today's lunch was soup and grilled cheese sandwiches.  Raves all around, and I guess now I can say goodbye to Campbell's Tomato Soup. Thank you - allrecipes.com! That left me with another 20 or so ounces of remaining tomato juice, and I was hankering to do something crazy with it.  And what would be on the other end of the tomato usage spectrum, if innocent, comforting tomato soup is on the another? The Bloody Mary, of course!  Blo...