Spring Rolls in Summer

One of my favorite ways to use and eat fresh vegetables is spring rolls! I just love the taste bud sensation of cool rice paper wrappers crammed with a vibrant explosion of flavor. Since my garden is overflowing with radishes, snap peas, cilantro, and assorted greens, I can think of no better way to use them then this dish. It takes some time to chop and assemble but it's worth the effort. Spring rolls have become a regular craving for me.

My spring roll ingredient list is never the same twice. You can add in any cooked meat or seafood you like, but I prefer them vegetarian style. I start with romaine, spinach, chard, or a combination of large leafy greens for an inner wrap to contain the rest of the veggies. I actually used a few young beet leaves the last time I made these, having pleasantly mistaken nearby beet greens for ruby chard while picking in the garden.

Next, I chop vegetables into short thin sticks or smallish pieces. Cucumbers, radish, snap peas, carrots, cabbage, and celery all lend a terrific crunch. I sometimes add raisins, dried cranberries, cherries, avocados and or nuts as well. Sometimes I add rice noodles prepared as directed. Often I get so excited about the vegetables that I forget the noodles.

To top things off I add fresh ginger shavings, a bit of cilantro and minced garlic or onion. Cilantro gives the roll a nice punch, though this is one herb I add sparingly, much to the dismay of my oldest daughter, who would sneak more cilantro in if she were standing by. Finally I add a hint of dressing which can be a lemon honey vinegrette or an asian style dressing. For dipping, I like to use hoisen sauce jazzed up with some wasabi and ginger, but you can also use soy sauce or any asian style dressing or dipping sauce.


Assembling the rolls can be a bit of a challenge. I wet two rice paper circles well, and set them on a cutting board. The wet rice paper will quickly soften into a cool moist flexible wrapper. Next I lay a large leaf or two of romaine or other greens on top the rice paper to help contain the rest of the veggies. Then I drop a few peices of each of my remaining ingredients in the center of the leaf. Usually I put too much stuff in and have to go back and remove something or else I end up with a ripped and bulging roll which tastes fine but looks unimpressive.

When I get the insides just right, I begin on one end carefully rolling both the rice paper and the leaf wrapper together over the inner ingredients. I tuck the sides into the roll just before I get to the halfway point of rolling. If I try to wet more than two rice papers at a time, I find they get too soft for me to roll them easily. I don't have restaurant style neatness and conformity on my finished spring rolls yet, but then good gardeners are seldom perfectionists. Finally I slice the rolls in half on the diagonal to get a colorful presentation on the plate. Any goofed up rolls get gobbled down by me in the back room! Left over cut up vegetables get tossed into a stir fry or a salad the next day.


Spring rolls are a fun way to use vegetables and a great way to experiment with some new ingredients. You can find rice papers, hoisen sauce and anything else you need in the asian section of most large grocery stores. With any luck you will find yourself developing a new craving for colorful crunchy spring rolls all year long!

How does your garden grow?

Things are really coming along here in my little 5' x 10' raised bed garden. I am amazed at what I can grow in such a small space. The spinach and radishes are about done. The marigolds and nasturtium failed from the get go, but the squash and tomatoes are going crazy. We have been eating sugar snap peas and lettuce like crazy from the garden. The beans are flowering and the eggplant is holding its own.

I think this picture displays the magic of square foot gardening! radish, leeks, peas, beans carrots and baby beets all snuggled in close. Because every inch is planted weeds are nearly non existant at this point. I can weed this bed in 1 minute a day. No tilling or digging because beautiful loose organic soil was trucked in and dumped 1 foot high. When the radishes come out the carrots take over their place. The peas are shading the spinach for an extra week or two of sweet harvesting. And best of all my neighbors think I am a genius! Little do they know that anyone could do this with a tiny bit of planning and the right seeds.
Tomatoes and squash are duking it out and the basil has been divine! The peas which didnt require staking are sure happy that they got some support anyhow! And I am finding myself dreaming about vegetables.

what to do with a bumper crop of radishes

We have radishes out the wazzoo! I have tried several radish salad recipes but so far none are keepers. I did however find that I love radish sandwiches!!! This would also be a great appetizer dip or topping for crackers or celery. I used 4 oz cream cheese softened and a heaping tablespoon of chopped chives with 2 garlic cloves minced and salt and pepper to taste. I sliced thin about 7 or 8 radishes which had been halved or quartered depending on their size. I salted the radishes and set them in a colander over a paper towel and let them drain for about twenty minutes. After that I squished out a bit more water from the radishes and mixed them with the above ingredients. We spread the mixture on both rye toast and a bagel! The results were delish!

A bit of a parterre garden

This is as formal as it gets around my yard. I love the look of a formal parterre mixed with herbs and fruit trees. But not too fussy or groomed. The gravel for my paths came from a client's home when she no longer wanted it and the brick was left over from a construction site. I have been having a heck of a time this year due to rabbits eating my parsley and a few other things. In this picture you can see creeping thyme and curry in the urn, surrounded by 4 squares of oregano, sage, parsley and dill. The inside of the circle is also ringed with purple basil which is sitting defiantly in its place refusing to grow an inch since I moved it out from the nice warm house and the grow lights. Reminds me a bit of a child I know...heheh! Well, eventually I hope they both get happier where they are and begin to burst forth with new life!

Other things planted in my herb garden are lavender, echinacea, love lies bleeding, lemon thyme, english thyme, genovese basil, bloody sorrel, chocolate mint, bronze fennel, cilantro, chives, a few stray tomatoes and a struggling old espaliered bartlett pear tree. I pulled up all the french tarragon last year because it had grown so old and woody. Since then I have not found any new tarragon worthy of planting.

This year I proudly outwitted the chives by picking off all the lovely chive flowers before they went to seed which I hope will save me a lot of trouble next year digging out stray chive plants from the gravel path. But I was sorry to remove those pretty little purple balls since they were about the only spring color in the parterre other than green. Somewhere in my herb garden I vaguely remember planting some seeds for a greek oregano that was supposed to make a really swell immune boosting oil of oregano. It was the end of a long day working in the yard and planting way too many seed packets. I was in a panic trying to find an empty spot for the last seeds on my list. I should have used a plant marker because the location of this new oregano has completely left my memory.

If you decide to plant an herb garden, be sure you keep it close to the kitchen, for if you are like me, you will be scurrying out the door once or twice during most meal preparation snipping a bit of this or that for seasonings. Whenever I am at a loss for what to make, I grab a bit of english thyme from the garden and sprinkle it on chicken breasts, sometimes still frozen. I top the chicken with some olive oil, fresh lemon juice, and garlic. Finally I add a dash of salt and pepper and bake uncovered for a half hour or so, depending on whether the breasts are thawed or not. The results are always delicious and satisfying.

OH SNAP!

It is June already, and so much has happened since my last post! I don't know where to start! I have peas popping and rabbits hopping! Last night we ate our first salad made solely from vegetables grown in our own yard. It was delicious and so fresh. I used spinach, several assorted varieties of leaf lettuce, and radishes. This morning I even tossed some spinach and radishes into omelets with a bit of goat cheese for a great start to the day! The sugar snap peas are coming on quick and should be ready to eat in a day or two! I can't wait!

We had a bit of a problem with bunnies in the yard so we devised a simple fence by stapling green plastic fencing to 1" x 1" x 4' stakes which we slide in and out of brackets screwed to the outside of the raised bed frame so that we can get in to the garden easily but the rabbits can't.
I think it is working wonderfully as it takes only seconds to put up or down. A deer is munching on my purple loosestrife growing just a few feet away from the raised bed garden. I am hoping this brazen little buck with his newly sprouted velvet covered antlers doesn't decide to lean over my rabbit sized fence and sample my veggies.

Most of the things I planted are doing well. The marigolds and nasturtiums never sprouted. I am wondering if I inadvertently weeded them away in my haste to clean up the garden one day. My banana peppers got long and leggy and flopped over. Since then they have refused to grow another inch. I may replant them now that it has warmed up.

My scraggly eggplant seedling got seriously sunburned when I moved them outside Then the few leaves that survived got attacked by flea beetles. I am managing this with plastic jugs to cover the eggplants. I cut the bottom off the jugs and saved the top caps. Then I set the jugs over the eggplants. I cap the jugs at night to keep the warmth in, and uncap them during the day to keep them from overheating. This is working well and the eggplants are perking up. I haven't seen a flea beetle on my eggplants since. Soon the eggplant will outgrow the jugs which is okay since the jugs need to come off before the plants begin to flower anyhow.



I took my camera out to the garden and snapped some shots of the Tom Thumb lettuce and Bloomsdale spinach after the rain. The French Breakfast radishes needed a bit of wash up before they were camera ready! Anyhow aren't they gorgeous?