lunch and last night's dinner!!

Lunch!!

Since I got back from Chicago I've been craving spring rolls at least once a week, but I haven't found anyone in my area that makes especially spectacular ones. A couple months ago (maybe not even that long) SELF had a recipe in the magazine called Summer Rolls so I decided to give it a shot. It was actually pretty easy to make them at home and this way I can put whatever I want inside them! I would highly suggest giving them a try. Here's a link to the recipe on Self.com.

http://www.self.com/health/recipes/2008/04/0421summerrolls

The first time I made them I used the recipe above, but today I branched out! I used cellophane noodles, carrot, lettuce, venison (leftover from Friday), and asparagus. They were yummy! I dip them in a red chilli sauce that is both spicy and sweet. It adds a little more oomph to the rolls. The trickiest part about making them is actually rolling them. You have to soak the rice paper in water to get it to loosen up and then it's very flimsy and a little sticky. So it can be tricky, but I think I got the hang of it.

Last night's dinner!!

Again inspired by my trip to Chicago I decided to make sweet potato fries last night. I googled the bar menu where we got the fries and saw they used brown sugar on them. Basically I cut up a sweet potato, put it in a bowl with enough olive oil to coat them, some salt, and brown sugar, spread them on a baking sheet and baked for 40 minutes at 450. They were awesome! I'll definitely try that recipe again, although next time I'm going to line the baking sheet with foil or something because cleanup wasn't so much fun. Yeah for good food!

A side note...did you know that some sweet potatoes aren't orange on the inside? When I chopped mine up yesterday it wasn't what I was expecting, but after checking Betty Crocker I was assured it was in fact a sweet potato. It tasted very similar, but was more yellow than orange.