To me, summer rolls is not just a healthy dish when it comes to food. This is the food that I often shared with my close friends in Vietnam. When we got together for a small party, this dish was always on the menu. Until now, when I am far away, we are still chatting about how happy we are when having this dish together.

Since arriving in New Zealand, whenever I have chances to invite my international friends over, summer rolls is the dish I prepare for them. I am proud to say that everyone loves it. Some of my friends even tried to make summer rolls that followed my recipe. They all said this dish is healthy, yummy and easy to prepare. Since this is my first time posting on Foodie Bee Hive, I think I should start with this traditional meal.

Living overseas means that I might not be able to find the same ingredients for the best summer rolls I used to have. I also have to tweak the recipe to make it work. But honestly, it is easy to make summer rolls with just any fresh ingredients you have. Below are how to prepare summer rolls for 2 people. It is summer here in NZ now so every weekend I would prepare this for our lunch.

The recipe below I wrote for my friends as they would like to make it for their family. There is no need to follow the recipe at all. You can add any ingredients you like to your summer rolls.

^{Vegeterian summer rolls with simple ingredients: fried eggs, cucumber, capsicum and red cabbage}

^{If you want to eat with meat, you can add pork...}

^{Summer rolls with beef wrapped in kawakawa leaves}

^{Summer rolls is a great option when you have to cook for friends that are meat-lovers and vegeterians}

^{How we eat summer rolls in Vietnam. We all sit down on the floor and have meals together}

SUMMER ROLLS RECIPE for 2 pp

You will need:

• 3 big lettuce leaves or if you love green, add as much as you want. If you don't have lettuce, don't worry any green could do. I used both green and red cabbage, spinach, green salad leaves before and they were all good.

• 1 big carrot or 2 small ones: Chop them into long and thin slices so it will be easier to do the wrap.

• 1 capsicum: Chop them into long and thin slices

• Half-cucumber: Chop them into long and thin slices

• Mushroom (optional) (stir-fry)

• Broccoli (optional) (stir-fry)

• 4 eggs

• Rice noodles (100gr)

• Rice wrapper

• Garlic and soy sauce

Instructions to prepare all the ingredients

• Break the eggs in a bowl, put in a bit of salt then mix well before frying them with oil, try to make them thin and round, then you can slice them to wrap summer rolls.

• Chop garlic into small pieces then stir fry them (using the same frying pan for the egg). Keep half of them and mix with premium dark soy sauce.

• I like to stir-fry broccoli with garlic. Again using the same pan (by doing this in order, I don’t have to clean a lot)

• Soak rice noodles in boiling water for 2-3 minutes until it is soft or some rice noodles you will have to cook for 5 minutes

• Tear the lettuce leaves into pieces

• Prepare one big bowl of cold water as you will need to wet the rice paper

• You can put carrot, cucumber, capsicum (chopped) and stir-fry things on one plate and use another for rice noodles, lettuce and eggs.

How to Wrap:

For Vietnamese, I don't have to explain this part but I find most of my foreign friends struggling to get it right. So please pay attention to this.

Once everything is ready. You'll need to:

• Dip the rice wrapper into a bowl of cold water, then quickly take it out

• Place it in a place.

• Start with a piece of lettuce or cabbage, then rice noodle, some slice of eggs, carrot, cucumber, capsicum, mushroom and broccoli, then roll it. You can close at both sides to make it look nicer and easy to eat

• Serve with the garlic dark soy sauce

I hope you will enjoy this recipe. If you have any questions, please do let me know in the comment below.

This is the first post in my food series blog to aim for raising awareness about the importance of eating real food. You might ask "What do you mean by that?". Eating real food means eating foods in their natural stage, reducing as much as possible processed food and ultra-processed food in your daily consumption.

So my friends, why not start our new year's resolutions by making positive changes to our life with the first easy step - eating real food?

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