Asian Dinner (4 Course Meal)

Our friend Linn had come over to hangout that afternoon so Crystal and her were down by the pool for hours.  It was just way too hot for me to be outside so I hung out by myself inside.  I got a bit antsy so I decided to play with some food.  I had purchased some dried seaweed a while ago and wanted to put it to use.  I have never done anything with seaweed before so it was going to be fun.

I soaked the dried seaweed sheets for a while in hot water to re-hydrate it.  I forget all the time when re-hydrating dried food, it tends to double or triple in size.  Needless to say, I had a lot of seaweed to eat.  After about 45 minutes, i strained it and notice there was tons of sand in it.  Now this was the tedious part...had to get out all the sand.  It was easier to clean when I cut the sheets of seaweed into stripes and just washed it that way.  

I threw together a quick dressing for the seaweed consisting of soy sauce, vinegar, thai garlic chilli sauce and lime and just let it set in the fridge for a while.  

At this point, I ran to the store after realizing I was officially out of food at home.  Normally I can whip together something real quick with whatever was in the fridge, but in this case, I had nothing.  I knew the girls were going to be hungry anyways so I had planned another Asian dinner with multiple dishes.

Since I had the Peking ribs for Mother's Day, I have been craving it.  So dinner for Saturday consisted of:

• Seaweed Salad
• Cucumber Salad
• Peking Ribs
• Eggrolls

The seaweed salad was sitting in the fridge already from that afternoon.  The cucumber salad was something thrown together quickly.  I used the same dressing for the seaweed salad and thinly sliced the cucumber and just let it marinade. 

For instructions to the peking ribs, please visit my post from Mother's Day.  A quick tip that I did this time around that I did not the first time was to reserve the stock that was made from boiling the ribs.  This can be used for another dish or day to make soup.

For the eggrolls, I had some in the freezer from the last batch we had made.  I have been told by many people that my eggrolls are amazing.  My eggrolls consist a mixture of pork, shrimp, shredded carrots, onion, garlic and black fungus.  Of course I threw in my mixes of sauces into the mixture.