We love spring rolls in this household. They are filled with fresh ingredients and super easy to make. Years ago, we had a craving for some so we picked up a few at our favorite sushi restaurant when we lived in Dallas. They were good, but the price was outrageous. It was then and there that I decided we could actually make them ourselves.
This isn’t a formal recipe, but more of a guide. That’s the best thing about spring rolls, there are no set in stone rules about what you fill them with.
We bought the majority of the ingredients at the Asian market here in Longview, but I’ve seen the same ingredients at the grocery store.
First I cook the rice noodles. They come in a big bag and a little goes a long way. I found these individual serving ones that come as a little mat. They were so much easier than the normal cook all together ones, but either one is fine to use.
just cook according to package directions. The ones I used you just pour boiling water over, leave for 1 minute 15 seconds, then dunk then in cold water for 1 second.
After they were finished cooking I just left them on a cutting board while I finished preparing the other ingredients.
For these rolls I used carrots, cucumber, orange bell pepper, cilantro, imitation crab sticks and shrimp. You can use anything you have on hand. I’ve seen all veggie, chicken, mushroom, the sky’s the limit.
Now here is the fun part. Rice paper comes in a thin hard disk, like a flattened paper plate. But when you soak it in water
it becomes translucent and pliable. The package says to soak it in warm water for 5 seconds. That wasn’t long enough though. You don’t want any stiffness to remain.
See what I mean? You can barely see it on the cutting board.
Now you just lay down the noodles in the middle of the rice paper and then pile whatever you like in yours on top. Fold the top and bottom over then just roll it.
I like to dip mine in peanut sauce.
So there you have it, a super easy, healthy meal, that doesn’t cost a fortune. My kids like to help make them by chopping the ingredients and assembling them. I hope you try them. ❤
We planned to do a little fishing. There are two really good fishing piers.
Hannah caught the first fish.
Jack caught the next one and ended up catching the most. We threw them all back, but everyone had fun.
After a few hours of fishing, we decided to do a little geocaching. If you’ve never tried it, you should. All you have to do is download the app.It will tell you how far you are from a cache, give you the coordinates and then you have to find it. The cache can be all different things. Sometimes there are little gifts, but most of the time there is just a log where you sign your name and the date you found it.
At the top of a hill we came across this structure that was built in the 1930’s.
By the time we got back down to the trailhead, we were all pretty worn out. It was getting late so we decided to head home. I had seen that there was another geocache not far from the entrance to the park so we decided to give it another shot and guess what…..
The perfect ending to a really good day.
Donny suggested that we spend the day in Jefferson for mother’s day. Well, heck yeah. It’s one of our favorite towns to visit. We had seen an expose on the news about how the downtown area was opening up again, so we thought we’d go see what there was to do.
The Funky Frugalista 