1. I could only find one kind of Asian egg roll wrapper in the "Ethnic Foods" aisle at the grocery, and it's not the traditional type of lumpia wrapper that I am used to from when I was growing up. I had to get the Vietnamese rice paper thing. It should work okay. I test-fried one lumpia tonight and I don't think the heat was high enough, nor did I let it fry long enough since the outer wrapper was this weird hybrid of crispy/chewy/greasy. Errors duly noted. Will do much better when we head over to our friends' house and I cook them there. Regardless, the lumpia filling that I made turned out PERFECT. Also, my mummy's recipe made a ridiculous amount of food. Woo hoo! Pre-emptive leftovers!
2. I could not find cornstarch in the grocery store. At all. We went through the entire store twice, and I paced up and down the damn baking foods aisle at least ten times. No dice. I finally gave up and decided to try again tomorrow morning, when my brain isn't dead from spending an eternity in the produce section trying to figure out what the hell a parsnip was and where I could find 3 cups worth of them. Anyway, we were standing in line at the checkout counter and Scott heroically offered to make a mad dash and try to find the cornstarch. As I started putting our groceries on the conveyer belt, he came running triumphantly to our line and, since he could not get to me easily through the people in line behind me, he victoriously raised above his head so I could see a gigantic jug of ... corn syrup. Ah well. All I could do was look up and slowly shake my head from side to side with a frowny face. It's the thought that counts, right?
3. By my third hour of improvised chopping, grating, grinding, etc. since we own neither a blender nor a food processor, I made the (definitely) wise decision to pull the Cream of Parsnip Soup with Potato Crisps and Bacon from my roster. The recipe, according to Mistah Emeril, calls for an hour and a half of prep time, and another hour of cooking time. Zoinks! Hells no. But, seeing as how I devoted a rather large portion of my life hunting down those damned parsnips earlier this evening -- which may or may not have involved me sidling up to one unsuspecting fellow shopper and asking if she knew what a parsnip looked like and then remarking, "Where the hell's the produce guy when you need him, right?" -- I will attempt to make this soup at some point this weekend. I'm sure it will be delicious even though I have no idea what parsnips taste like ... but it involves fried thinly sliced potates and crispy bacon, so it will be glorious.
Anyhoo, in the all too likely event that I will be entirely too stuffed and bloated later today to roll myself over to a computer, I will say this now: Happy Turkey Day everbody!!
A little tip for next time. Save time by getting pre-shredded carrots and the coleslaw mix for the cabbage shreds. You can also just use the fozen mixed vegetables and then you'll only have to chop onions and tofu. That's what I usually do since I don't want to spend hours chopping.
ReplyDeletehaha thanks. my thanksgiving meal here consisted of a croque-madame(a yummy french grilled ham and cheese sandwich with a random fried egg on top) and for dinner spaghetti. luckily all the americans are cooking thanksgiving dinner tomorrow night. and something tells me you would have had a little extra turkey even if it wasn't in my honor. ;-)
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