Hey Grandpa! What's for supper?

[LeslieDean]

Do you remember this from Hee Haw? Where Grandpa would stand in his bib overalls and rattle off what's for supper. It always sounded so good. We should have a tab just for what the friends from around the world are cooking. I have learned a great deal through our international brotherhood about cooking different cuisines. One Vietnamese sister was going to teach me how to make Spring Rolls.

She told me to be at her house by 8 and we would go shopping for the ingredients and then she would teach me. Well I was there on time and had visions of going to downtown LA to the Central Market and shopping for exotic ingredients and going back to her house and she would teach me the intricate details of preparing the best Spring Rolls I have ever tasted. This was the reality of it. We got in her car and drove to Gelson's (a high end grocery store in Marina Del Rey. We went inside and bought packages of ALREADY shredded cabbage and then went to the international food isle.

She picked up the cellophane noodles and a few other things then we returned to her house. Instead of a hand me down wok passed on to her through countless generations she pulled out a "green" skillet purchased from QVC because she is partial to it. Then she took a package of Jimmy Dean sausage and browned it in the skillet. She added a handful of shredded carrots (already shredded) and some sliced celery hearts (yep, already sliced) then shook a few chugs of soy sauce (low sodium) then dumped a bag of shredded cabbage into the pan. She quickly removed this from the heat and stirred in a couple of spoonfuls of peanut butter (the SECRET ingredient) and took the egg roll wrappers (again already prepared--no mixing the dough to make the wrappers) and we began to assemble the egg rolls.

She did not add the glass noodles because she "forgot". They were indeed the best I have ever tasted! When I asked her for the recipe she went to the laptop in her kitchen and printed off the recipe and gave it to me telling me it was a "old family" recipe. She winked at me and gave me a hug. As I got in my car I notice the top of the recipe and it was taken from the Jimmy Dean website!!! We had a hearty laugh over that. When I spoke to her later she said that there was no harm in taking short cuts and being able to have more time in Jehovah's service! What a great lesson for me. We can enjoy the lengthy cooking sessions when we have time. I hope you enjoy this story as much as I did spending the day and creating this memory with our dear sister.

Edited to add some needed paragraphs