The Monday catch-up long blog post: Lumpia, applesauce, and the Great British Bake-Off

Lynn-Marie

9 years ago

This is going to be a loooong blog post! Just to warn you! Long blog posts once in a while aren’t a bad thing though.

Just like last weekend, I was not able to post about our weekend and end-of-week happenings, so I had to post on Monday. This might end up being a regular thing. Monday is still a crazy day (laundry day for anyone? 😉 but it is less crazy than Wednesday on.

One of my staple meals is lumpia and rice. It’s my fallback meal when I can’t think of anything else to make! It usually takes me two or three days to make lumpia, so when I do make it, I try to make a LOT. My friends occasionally order lumpia from me also, so that was the main reason I made them last week.

I’ve been making lumpia since I was a kid. I remember that my mom used to make it using an uncooked filling, but when I was a teenager, she switched to using a cooked filling. I like the cooked filling better so that is the way I make it now. I will be using the terms lumpia and eggroll interchangeably in this post. They are pretty much the same thing.

*First, I cook the filling in a huge wok. I love my nonstick wok.*

For the filling, I used almost 3 pounds of ground beef, 1 pound of ground pork, and 2 pounds of frozen mixed vegetables.

*Once the filling is cooked, it is important to drain most of the fat and cool the filling. Otherwise, the wrappers get too wet and you end up with a soggy mess.*

*This is my usual eggroll rolling setup. Wrappers on the left, water for sealing and the bowl of filling in front of a cutting board, then finished eggrolls go on the right.*

*I make small eggrolls so I cut each wrapper in half. This also saves money and makes the eggrolls crisper since there is not as much wrapper to cook.*

I put about 1 tablespoon of filling in each eggroll. If I am using another brand, then I have to use less filling because 1 tablespoon will tear the wrapper when I am rolling it.

My all-time favorite eggroll wrapper. It is SO easy to work with! I have found that I can work a lot faster when I use this brand. I also don’t tear as many wrappers during separating. Each package makes about 60 eggrolls.

*It looks kind of like a little envelope.*

*Now, take the bottom part of the rectangle over the filling and tuck in the filling like you would a baby. 🙂*

*You want to tuck it in tight, but not too tight!*

*Oops! I tucked it in too tight and the filling tore through the wrapper. Maybe when I roll it up the holes will be covered.*

*Wet the top of the triangle and roll it up!*

*Now it can join the rest of the eggrolls waiting to be put away.*

*Fry them up in enough oil to cover one side of the eggrolls in a skillet. A deep fryer is probably best but I just like to use a skillet to make it quick.*

*Eggrolls! Yum! All ready to eat with some sweet and sour sauce and hot cooked rice! These aren’t authentic lumpia but they still taste good!*

EDIT: I just realized I forgot to say how many lumpia this amount of filling makes. I am estimating that I made around 200 eggrolls. I wasn’t directly counting since I rolled eggrolls at two different times using the same filling. One time was to stock up on eggrolls for us and the other was for my friend who ordered them.

I also made homemade applesauce on Friday. I had been wanting to make some for about a week but just could not get to it! My poor honeycrisp apples had to wait a while to get my attention.

*4 pounds of apples in my biggest pot! I think I might have used too much water. Oh well. I drained out most of the water but kept some of it in so the applesauce would keep some moisture.*

*I was not able to take as many pictures of this process as I wanted. Maybe I was in a bit of a rush. That happens to me a lot. These are the apples after they’ve cooked for about 35-45 minutes.*

*I didn’t make enough applesauce to can, so I just put the applesauce into a jar to keep in the fridge.*

I used a blender to make the applesauce smooth instead of chunky. It tasted good but I think I should have left a little more “chunk” in there. I think I am going to try the applesauce on my kids at lunch today.

The recipe for the applesauce came from a book that I probably should buy: Make the Bread Buy the Butter. I keep renewing it since I borrowed it from the library. I did add in some vanilla extract just to give it some extra flavor (or maybe I am just a vanilla addict.)

If you’d like to take a look at the book, you can click the image below and it will take you to Amazon.

Josh and I are currently watching this really fun baking show: The Great British Bake-Off. We’ve been watching it on Netflix from Season 1, where it is called The Great British Baking Show. I don’t know why they changed the name. I like Bake-Off better!

We are big fans of pretty much anything British, examples being: Doctor Who, Doc Martin, Midsomer Murders, Foyle’s War, lemon curd, lemon marmalade, crumpets, marinated mushrooms for breakfast, and English Breakfast tea.

This show is showing me that I really don’t know how to bake. So far, we have seen “amateur” bakers make biscuits (crackers for us Americans), bread, and sponge cake. Yes, I am working on learning how to make bread, but I’ve never attempted making my own crackers or sponge cake!

I am considering trying to make wheat crackers tomorrow using discard sourdough starter. I am sure if I get to it that it will end up being a blog post. 🙂

Some last things – I realized on Saturday the advantages of a large kitchen. I was at my parents’ house and they have a huge kitchen with a lot of counter space. While I was there, I was able to make: pancit (which can take about 2 to 3 hours just by itself), lemon cheesecake bars using sugar substitute, boxed brownies, and baked baby potatoes for smashed potatoes (instead of mashed potatoes). All those took me about 5 hours to make there, but here at home, all of that would have taken me about 7 hours I think. This means that there is no way I would have made all that while I was at home. Somehow, I made less of a mess too! I’m not sure how that happened. Our kitchen is a good size but without an island for prep work, I am constantly moving things around to make space for bowls, ingredients, etc.

Today’s project is a cheesecake that I have been waiting to make for a week. Right now, I have it in the oven cooling and am hoping that it doesn’t crack! I may post about this cheesecake later if I am able to get a good picture!

I also would like to share the recipe for my mom’s lumpia but I think that might need to be a separate post. Hopefully, I can type it up tomorrow!

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