SCHOOL!

The semester is in full swing here and wow! 

It's going to be a busy one. 

I'm learning first hand how important it is to plan ahead if I want healthy-good-for-me food. Luckily I have an amazing partner in crime to help out on days that seem to go on for forever before I'm able to get home and cook. 

A hint: being gluten free, brown rice and other grains have become a staple in our house but take FOR EV ER to cook, especially when I'm hungry. Solution: Make a weeks worth of rice at a time and save the extra in the fridge. It will cut down on time it takes to cook food and warms up nicely on the stove or microwave. 

I use this rice cooker some lovely person gave us for our wedding. I just dump everything in there and turn it on and go back to reading, it beeps when the rice is done; it's so choice!

Spring Rolls

I find that spring rolls are a great way to enjoy the taste or feel of spring/summer even as autumn ushers it's way in. I love mixing cucumbers, carrot peels (or long-thin slices), spinach, avocado, some cilantro, and sometimes garlic together in these wraps. It's a great place to add almost any vegetable you need to use up before it goes bad.

I like to mix my vegetables together beforehand so it's faster/easier to make a lot of spring rolls all at once.

After everything is mixed here comes the tricky part: working with the rice paper. You need it to be wet in order to make it work how you need to, but it can't be too wet because it will fall apart quickly.

A hint to working with the rice paper: Rice paper gets really soft very  quickly when left in water. Dip in a shallow bowl, pie tin, or plate long enough to fully saturate the under side and mostly wet the top side; then quickly move it to an awaiting plate. From there pile on all the fixings.

Once everything is properly moistened I like to pile on some vegetable mixture and roll it like I would a burrito. Start with small quantities at first and build up from there as the rice paper can only hold so much at one time. 

Enjoy!

I like butter

I was just thinking about food to make for tonight 

(also known as absentmindedly scrolling through pinterest). 

When I came across a recipe for brussel sprouts my mind flashed back to when I learned from my friend Alexis the perfect way to eat/make them. 

Butter. 

That's the key. 

Lots of good fat is what helps that vegetable, coconut oil may work, but butter just has that traditional taste to it, ya know? 

As a bonus butter helps your body absorb certain nutrients from your food. 

I think that's neat