Food is love

Some of my earliest memories are of sitting down at the dining room table with this stack of horribly thin, glued together, gotta-be-very-careful lumpia wrappers, trying to pry each one off in as complete a fashion as I could. 'cause I like lumpia, and each time my mom made it, there was never enough.

For those of you not in the know, lumpia are long, skinny, Filipino egg rolls with stuff in them. Over the years, I've come to the conclusion that the skinnier and thinner, less meat and more vegetables you put in your lumpia the more Filipino you are. I use a lot of shrimp and pork, which goes to show you--a) I'm not pure blooded, and b) I hate bean sprouts, they give me the old cold grue.

I use Chinese standard. Otherwise known as "the" won ton, egg roll (real egg roll, not Chinese take-out) siu mai, dumpling and steamed bun filling. As much ground pork as you have, a couple glug-glugs of oyster sauce, a glug of sesame oil, a glug of soy sauce, and some chopped green onions.

But...yeah--I'm off the subject of lumpia and I wanted to wax poetic about Simex individually separated lumpia wrappers. An invention whose time needed to come about twenty years ago. These puppies are the best food-vention since sliced ham in a bag. Each and every one of the "individually" separated wrappers, (which are about the thickness and consistency of tissue paper) comes wedged between two non-stick paper disks. For your convenience!

And how cool is that?

They cost a dollar more. And worth every penny. It used to be that I had to love you seriously if I made lumpia. Now I just gotta be in the mood.