food to glow

Lower carb avocado, rainbow vegetable and prawn-filled Vietnamese summer rolls are perfect dipped into silky peanut-tamarind dip. An easy, healthy appetizer, starter or light supper. Swap prawns for marinated tofu for a vegan option.

Apologies if you have come looking for a photo post on my idyllic Scottish Outer Hebrides trip. I had underestimated how many photos I took on both my phone and my DSLR. Basically, I am still going through them all.

Back in the days when we shot on actual film, we were much less snap-happy. (Okay, some of you are too young to have used a film camera or even know what one looks like.) Not seeing the fruits of your careful and artistic composition until Boots or Walgreens had a good laugh at them in the lab, processed them, stuck stickers on the blurry ones and had you part with a fiver for 36 glossy 4x6s, was a disincentive to go too mad with the shutter button.

So, this weekend I will hopefully finish my editing, and next week share some of what we saw and experienced travelling through Scotland’s wild Atlantic islands. If you crave a secluded and relaxing Scottish getaway, you won’t want to miss my post. When I finally post it. 🙂

In the meantime, I wish to share with you a quicker riff on an old summer roll recipe of mine. If you’ve only ever had summer rolls at your favourite Vietnamese restaurant, you may be pleasantly surprised how easy and inexpensive they are to make. And unlike spring rolls, these are never fried.

Summer rolls are the quintessential Vietnamese cold appetizer. Even if you don’t care for Vietnamese food per se (although I’ve yet to meet an adult who doesn’t), I’m positive that soft rice paper rolls stuffed with fresh vegetables, herbs and noodles will appeal. Although, in this recipe I have eschewed the noodles and replaced them with um, more vegetables. I figure the wrapping is enough rice, especially if you are following these up with a meal containing starchy carbs. Bung in some cooked vermicelli noodles if you wish.

In truth, Andrew and I will just eat these for our supper and not bother with a “proper” cooked meal. Lazy, not virtuous, you understand.

I have to admit that my fine motor skills are pretty rubbish so these might not look as good as they taste. But trust me, these bursting with flavour and colour little wraps will have you planning to make these often, even as the days shorten and sleeves lengthen. The dip too is pretty special. We took a wee pot up north with us to spread on toast and plunge sugar snap peas into. So good!

Nutrition Notes: This recipe has quite a lot going for it nutritionally. If you “forgive” the teeny tiny rice wrappers, this is full of health-promoting fiber, phytochemicals, protein and good fats. The cabbage, radishes and pak choi are especially fab in terms of not only their fiber content, but also the plethora of anti-oxidant flavonoids and phenols, glutamine, vitamins K, E, C and folate. The trump card, however, is the richness of its glucosinolate content. Glucosinolates convert upon digestion into isothiocyanate compounds, known to be preventive for a variety of different cancers, including bladder cancer, breast cancer, colon cancer, and prostate cancer. The rainbow colours, garlic, ginger, turmeric and peanut butter here will also contribute some valuable disease-preventing phytonutrients. 

***Before I get to the recipe can I just ask you to do something for me? I have discovered that there are a couple of Facebook pages purporting to be me (calling themselves Food To Glow or, ugh, Food To Flow). They are posting my posts as their own, rewriting the url as their own, and in one case linking to a blog cloned from mine – all of my posts, my own bio pic, the whole kit and kaboodle, but named something else. If you have “liked” me on Facebook, can I ask you to double check that it is me that you have liked and are commenting and sharing from? Here is the authentic Food To Glow page. I have reported the rogue pages to Facebook but they are notoriously bad at dealing with such things (the reporting system is in fact circular) so they may be up for quite awhile. Tomorrow I will be starting the paperwork on reporting the cloned blog to Google and the fraudulent blog’s web host, and perhaps contacting my solicitor who dealt with something similar for me last year.

Anyway, thanks so much for not skipping down to the recipe. Do go check that it is me you are following on Facebook. One of the pages has almost 1000 likes (not far off what mine is!) and I’d hate to think it is one of you following this person thinking it is me. Thanks so very much. I really appreciate your support here and on my social media channels. ***

Ripe For Pinning!