Asian Night

Recently we have been back and forth to the DMV tag office by our house trying to get my new car registered so I can drive again!  The DMV happens to be located next to an Asian Market, so Ryan and I decided to actually go in and make an entire meal out of ingredients we bought at the Market that day. 

Once you get over the smell in this place, it is actually really neat. (I love the guy in this picture....who knows what he thought about some crazy girl taking pictures inside his grocery store!)

They sell rice in bags as big as our dogs food.

They have an entire aisle for soy sauce...

Their selection of fresh live fish is pretty impressive.  We stood and watched cute Asian men ordering fish for a while...very entertaining to watch the workers reach their hands in these tanks, slam the fish on the counter and get him ready to take home for dinner...

So at this point in our shopping trip I think I was embarrassing Ryan by all my picture taking...until we saw this and Ryan insisted I get a picture.  Yuck!

Ok so on to what we bought and ended up making.  We decided to make spring rolls for an appetizer and chow mein for the main course with sake to wash it all down!   The only things we didn't buy from the Asian market was the cabbage and the pork (we couldn't tell what was chicken, pork, veal...so we thought it best to take a trip to Whole Foods before heading home!)
We found a baked Spring Roll recipe here.

Ryan cooked the meat while I combined the other ingredients.

Then we were ready to assemble...well after we watch several You Tube videos of how to roll the spring roll of course!

While these baked we made a quick dipping sauce, warmed up some Sake and researched how to make beginners chop sticks for me:)

These were soooo good!

After we finished them we both wanted to make another round!  But on to the main course,  Chicken Chow Mein.  We used this recipe, but ommited the noodles that were on top.  For the rice we decided to cheat a little bit, since the dinner was already involved, and used instant rice.

The Chow Mein was super easy and did not dissapoint!

I had so much fun on our Asian Date night and hope we can make those spring rolls again soon!