Spring rolls

It's been hot here. My 5 year old loves munching on salads. We had a big salad for dinner last night. She suggested spring rolls for lunch because of the heat. It's basically a salad in a rice paper wrap. Actually, we put anything in them from rice and lentils, to cut up fruit and yogurt. They are fun to eat too. 

Today I made rice paper wraps with black beans, tofu, arugula with a homemade vinaigrette. You can get the rice paper from any asian market. I go to an Asian market called Ranch 99. They come in square or circle and many different sizes. I find the small square size is easiest to wrap. 

Black beans, tofu, arugula and vinaigrette on a soaked rice paper.

First, you wet one sheet of the dried rice paper by soaking in a big bowl of water for about 10 seconds. Remove and put on a plate. It will start to soften by itself. Add your ingredients to one corner. Try not to over fill or you won't be able to wrap it. Next, you fold the bottom corner onto the ingredients. Then fold over the 2 side corners to the center of the ingredients. Roll until you get to the top corner and voila, a spring roll! 

my 3 year old couldn't wait until lunch to eat her spring rolls!

Once you make them, they have a tendency to stick together so make sure you add something to prevent them from sticking to each other or it will break when you try to separate them. I used some celery sticks to keep them from sticking. In the top tier, I added strawberries and peaches. In her cloth baggie she has some gluten free cheese crunchies. 

Her lunch is not completely zero-waste because she has a mango gel cup and a yogurt stick. I went to volunteer at her school for snack time and she already ate one! :-)