Be Open to New Foods

One day at my old apartment the older lady downstairs stopped me. She handed me a plate of three egg roll things. She told me that she never eats things like that and she tried one but to her it didn't taste good. The food had been given to her by the neighbors that lived across from her, they are from the Philippines. I bring this little plate into my apartment and as I am holding it this sweet smell was permeating the air. Now I don't really like Chinese restaurant egg rolls, and in my mind I am thinking it must be very similar to that. But the smell was reeling me in so I took a big bite and I was overcome with flavor sensations. It was so sweet and it is really hard to describe just how it tasted. I stopped with that one so that my husband could taste it and he too was in love with this new food. So he talked to the guy downstairs and asked him if we helped to buy the ingredients could he show us how to make them. The neighbors explained to us that we were eating Lumpia, and as we learned that night, it is quite a process to make them, but it is beyond worth it.

 

You can find the Lumpia Wrapper in your frozen food section and they are very inexpensive.

To begin the process you must first chop the vegetables. Onion, Carrot and Garlic are all chopped or in our case we use a Ninja Bullet food chopper, otherwise this would take forever. After they are all chopped up you fry them and add raisons. (Not pictured here as you don't have to use them.) The seasoning that we use to fry them in is Mama Sita's Barbeque Marinade Mix.

 

You lay the Lumpia wrapper flat, and you add just a little bit of your veggies. You roll it part way, like one fold, and then you bring the edges in and continue to roll. Once it is tightly rolled you dip your finger into a bowl of egg white (not the yellow) and seal the edges of the Lumpia. The Lumpia wrapper box also has a diagram and instructions on how to roll them up.

 

 Once they are rolled up you begin to fry them.
We like to serve the Lumpia with rice. We have a rice cooker to cook the rice in. Ironically the rice cooker was also suggested to us by the Philippian couple. We add a tad olive oil, garlic powder and salt.

  

 Shown here is another food that my husband likes very much. This is one that he created. To begin you boil one or two pork loins until they are soft and a very light brown. Once they are done boiling you chop them up into bite-sized pieces.

 

 

Put them into a skillet long enough to brown them and then add rice. My husband also uses a light soy sauce. This is often a quick meal for us, we use it on days where we need something quick or something light.

I never would have imagined that one day I would be eating foods like this. I was once so picky that I wouldn't try anything new. I liked everything to be plain and all my food to be separate. My husband has been teaching me to step out of my comfort zone food box and into a whole new realm.

Genesis 2:7 And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.