Tempeh Spring Rolls with Pseudo Peanut Sauce

A couple weeks ago we went out to eat at a Thai restaurant which had spring rolls on their appetizers menu, we didn't order any but I had been thinking about/craving ever since. Fast forward to last weekend when strolling through the aisles of the grocery store I came across spring roll wrappers. Having never used them on top of my unusual yearning for spring rolls meant only one thing: I was buying the wrappers and would attempt to make my own, with a fail-safe meal in mind of course.

I looked at a couple recipes online but decided to just use what I had on hand and hope for the best. I sliced up some raw vegetables and tempeh (which I marinated) and then came the fun part: figuring out the magical powers a little warm water has on a rice paper wrapper! Seriously, I pulled out the dry wrappers and thought for sure I was going to crack them and the rolls would just fall apart, but after dipping them in water for 10 seconds they were instantly rip-proof and semi-flexible. So one by one I dipped, filled, and folded until all my rolls were done. It was THAT easy.

Ingredients

Restaurant Review: Ecopolitan

Tara and I both grew up in small towns, and were always dreaming of the day we were able to move to a metropolitan city. That dream finally came true almost two years ago. The thing that excited us most was probably the incredible, but daunting, choice we had of restaurants.

The first restaurant that I can remember Tara telling me that she really wanted to try was Ecopolitan. Being uncomfortable with vegetables in general, I was hesitant to try it. After about a year of steady conditioning (working up to eating an entire serving of vegetables in a day!), I was finally ready to take on the raw food hippie haven that is Ecopolitan.

(4.6.12) It was a study day for me, and I decided to drill some problems at Dunn Brothers in Uptown (they roast their beans fresh on site, but that's a whole other post...). Before long, it was 3 o'clock in the afternoon, my head hurt, and we hadn't yet eaten lunch. I packed up my things, and turned my thoughts to where we ought to go to lunch. The first place in the area that I thought of was Ecopolitan, and that's where we ended up going.