Product: Feel Good Foods Gluten-Free Vegetable Egg Rolls – $4.99+
Yesterday, I had a great day of great eating. No…I honestly mean it. It started off at my favorite local allergen-free bakery, Annie May’s Sweet Café. I had a delicious breakfast with my roommate and my good friend Patrick. And then…we all went out shopping and spending the rest of the day together. Around 1 p.m., however, our breakfast was gone and we were looking for a light lunch.
Patrick, a vegan, recommended a place, saying he was feeling Asian food. Korean food. However, Asian can be a scary and rather…dangerous…territory for me.
However, he had a backup to his first choice. He took Cathy and I over to a restaurant we had been meaning to try for a long while. Roots…in the Highlands in Louisville. Attached to it was Heart & Soy…but we were really feeling soup and he had quite a few suggestions for each of us. Better yet…both places are both vegetarian, mostly vegan, and had tons of gluten-free options.
Asian food was just what the doctor ordered. I had been craving it for awhile…and this was beyond anything I had in a long time. Most Asian food in my life is P.F. Chang’s…which…let’s face it…isn’t “real” Asian cuisine. So…this was a nice treat and the owner…she was adorable and so sweet. She also knew what Patrick wanted. Cookies. HA!
All of that aside, while I polished off my meal of a small Vegetarian Pho soup and my Sauteed Baby Spinach entrée, Cathy didn’t quite finish her Tofu Clay Pot…so she had some extra. Patrick mentioned pouring it over rice…and Cathy seemed very interested in that idea. I would need something else, as the Tofu Clay Pot wasn’t gluten-free…but I did have baby spinach at home and the idea to recreate the spinach dish I ate and put it with some brown rice. Dinner would be amazing…but I thought it might need a little something more.
For Christmas, my adoptive aunt, Judi, gave me a $50 gift card to Whole Foods. I am one happy girl because now I can start purchasing items I’ve been dying to try but haven’t really been able to justify with my budget. While the three items I decided on today were relatively cheap (I still have over $37 on my card), I was able to not talk myself out of something for fear of not having enough for the basics at the end of the day.
One of my gift card splurge purchases were the Vegetable Egg Rolls made by Feel Good Foods. Let me premise this by saying…I HAVE NOT HAD EGG ROLLS IN THREE YEARS! Yes…three years. Not since going gluten-free. So, when I see the words “GLUTEN FREE” followed by “VEGETABLE EGG ROLLS,” you better believe that box is coming out of the freezer and hitting my shopping basket. And, I had previously tried the Feel Good Foods Vegetable Pot Stickers (and LOVED them!), I felt good about this purchase. I wasn’t going to go, “but what if it sucks…what if I don’t like it?” I was confident it would be good.
Normally, I probably would have gone with the oven baked version of these egg rolls, however…I forgot I had them up until the rice was steaming in my pan on the stove. WHOOPS! So…in a panic, I opted for the pan fry option. And, honestly, I’m so glad I ended up going that way.
But let me come back to that momentarily.
Feel Good Foods has the slogan: Don’t worry. Eat happy. And, with the promise of having no added MSG, no preservatives, and no artificial flavors, I was already feeling good about my purchase. Creators, Tryg and Vanessa met at a restaurant where he was the chef and she was working. When he discovered that she couldn’t have the staff-created meals, he began creating gluten-free versions of the dish. They created Feel Good Foods gluten-free frozen foods after they opened a gluten-free restaurant and were told that they needed to put their food out on the market. Their foods are non-GMO, all-natural and completely gluten-free. You see…Vanessa is a Celiac…so they take food allergies really seriously.
So…egg rolls. It was an easy thing to prepare, thank goodness…since I totally forgot about them until the very last moment. I already had spinach sautéing and wilting down. Crap. But, thankfully there was a simple pan fry method that would get the food done just in time. I got a non-stick pan heating up on the stove with 1/4 cup canola oil. I kept the heat around medium-high, and really let that pan get warm. As it warmed, I opened up the package of egg rolls and placed them on a plate, microwaving them for 30 seconds. Then, using some tongs, I eased each egg roll, flat side down, into the hot oil. I allowed each one to kook until the side was turning a rich, golden brown, then would flip it over and keep each side browning evenly. Once they were done, I removed the egg rolls from the pan and placed them on a paper towel while I served up the rice and topped it off with our perspective toppings…Cathy’s leftovers and my sautéed spinach.
Then…egg rolls were served…with a side of sweet chili sauce (which happened to be in my fridge).
Let me tell you, I will forever pan fry these egg rolls, which will forever have a place in my freezer for sure. I was SO impressed. First of all, by oven frying them, instead of baking them, I got this amazing golden wrap with the most amazing and perfect crispy texture. The vegetables inside were warmed all the way through and packed with delicious flavor and seasoning. I ate my main dish first and devoured the egg rolls, saying that next time I would just have egg rolls for dinner. Holy cow! Most amazing thing ever. Seriously, delicious. It reminded me so much of the egg rolls I used to devour when I ate Chinese food. This little side dish made me beyond happy. I wanted more. I still want more. DELICIOUS!!
Let’s talk about the ingredients. The Feel Good Foods Gluten-Free Vegetable Egg Rolls are made with all-natural ingredients. The filling in these egg rolls is made up of cabbage, yellow onion, bean vermicilli, carrots, green onion, corn starch, sesame oil, and less than 2% of evaporated cane syrup, ginger, salt, black pepper, yeast extract and shiitake mushrooms. The wrapper is made up from water, rice flour and less than 2% of eggs, salt and soy lecithin. As for the batter…it is a mix of water, rice flour, corn starch, canola oil, eggs, evaporated cane syrup, baking powder, salt, and soybean oil.
As for nutritional information, the Feel Good Foods Gluten-Free Vegetable Egg Rolls aren’t bad at all. Not really. A serving is 1 egg roll, in a box that comes with 3 egg rolls inside. One serving is only 90 calories and 2.5 grams of fat. One serving dishes up 5 mg cholesterol, 400 mg sodium, and 3 grams of sugar. One egg roll also delivers 1 gram of fiber and 2 grams of protein.
I really, really, really want to thank Tryg and Vanessa for these amazing frozen treats. They cooked up perfectly. They were packed with flavor. They were, honestly, one of the best things I have had since having to go gluten free. I wish I could hug them both. Because now I can enjoy egg rolls again. Asian food is coming back into my life…and this proves that I don’t have to it all from scratch. Sometimes I just need a hot pan and a little sweet chili sauce…the rest…Feel Good Foods takes care of.
It truly is food that you can feel good about…and makes you feel good about eating.
Now…I’m craving more.
The Celiathlete 