Spring Rolls

I really was super-excited to make spring rolls with a peanut dipping sauce. The main reason why I was so excited was that I got to make a trip to Mitsuwa, Mitsuwa is none other than the largest Japanese supermarket in the West, and it is also right down the street from my new house. Walking into Mitsuwa, I imagined finding tons of hidden vegan jewels and walking out with a full cart. Instead, I left shell-shocked, bewildered, and generally shaken, but with spring roll wrappers.
It was very, very strange to be in a store where I literally could not read the labels. Most of them had english on the back, but it was so tiny and indecipherabl, that I was not really sure of what went in anything. I perused the produce section, which had so many umeboshi products that a macrobiotatian would have thought they had died and gone to heaven. On the other hand, I do not much care for umeboshi after a particularly nasty incident with a weight-loss tea consisting of umeboshi, daikon, carrot, and (wait for it) soy sauce. Surprisingly, it was not as good as it sounds.
Back to my trip. I wandered shell-shocked up and down the aisles, occasionally picking up funny-looking boxes and straining to read the ingredients. Definitely NOT vegan-friendly. Even the breads seemed to all have either milk or butter in them. I'm sure I would have had more luck if I had gone with someone more familiar with the cuisine or the language. Fortunately, I did make it out in one piece and with my spring roll wrappers. I got home and was very excited to make my peanut dipping sauce with fresh peanut butter from the Whole Foods. Unfortunately, the peanut butter had some hard, grainy substance in it. Now, I was never emo enough to eat broken glass (I just walk on it), but if I had, this is what I imagine it would have been like.  I was very much into these spring rolls when we had them for dinner, and very much not into them the next day. So the lesson there is that they do not keep well. The other lesson is that Whole Foods puts plastic or something in their fresh-ground peanut butter, or at least they did that day.

Summer Spring Rolls

• 6 spring roll wrappers
• 1 bunch cellophane noodles (a.k.a glass noodles)
• 1 c. Trader Joe's broccoli slaw

Prepare the spring rolls according to the package instructions and layer with cellophane noodles and broccoli mixture.
Fold up like a burrito.

Peanut Dipping Sauce

• 1/4 c. peanut butter
• 2 TBSP. lemon juice
• 2 TBSP. soy sauce
• 2 TBSP soy milk
• water as needed

Heat the peanut butter, lemon juice, and soy sauce over a medium flame. As it heats, it will be easier to mix.
Stir in the soy milk and let the mixture come up to a very low boil.
Reduce heat and stir in as much water as you need to reach your desired consistency.
You can season with fresh ginger if you like.