Vietnamexican food

No, thankfully it's not fusion cuisine. I'm just too lazy to make 2 separate posts.

First off, spring rolls. A friend of mine is following a gluten-free vegan diet and I wanted to bring food to the potluck that she could actually eat :) I followed Nupur's instructions, as much as I ever follow instructions...

My filling ingredients were Melissa's baked tofu (prepackaged), thinly sliced; rice vermicelli noodles; thinly sliced carrots; thinly sliced yellow bell pepper; bean sprouts; cilantro; basil; green onion, and leaf lettuce. For the dipping sauce, I used Sriracha, chunky peanut butter, agave nectar, soy sauce, water, and fresh lime juice. And because my soy sauce contains wheat and I couldn't pin down whether Sriracha is gluten free, I also brought Taste of Thai peanut sauce. (Everyone else liked it, but I'm not a huge fan of coconut in savory things.) And if you don't feel like actually making spring rolls, you can mix the sauce with the filling ingredients and call it peanut noodle salad :)
And because I had tons of leftover cilantro, I decided to make black bean stew with cilantro lime rice. The rice was easy: I just added fresh lime juice, salt, and a couple of handfuls of cilantro to hot rice. And the stew wasn't much harder: I sauteed chopped butternut squash with chopped onion, added frozen corn, a can of black beans, a teaspoon of tomato paste, and ground cumin and cayenne pepper.

I still have a ton of cilantro. I'll probably try C&Z's poicamole, and I welcome any other cilantro-using recipes!

Guess what? Pepper butt!