Fresh Shrimp Spring Rolls with Avocado and Homemade Thai Dipping Sauce

This a great recipe to throw together for a lunch or fun appetizer that guests can put together themselves. It is healthy, fresh and kind of goes with the ever popular “raw-food” movement. Putting together a plate, like the one pictured above, is a fun and bright centerpiece for everyone to pick their favorite ingredients off of. The first step is to get the Thai Dipping Sauce going in a sauce pan. You simply combine your rice vinegar, regular vinegar, fish sauce, water, sugar, crushed garlic clove and chili garlic sauce into a sauce pan and reduce until it has the thickened consistency you want.

Then, take your rice paper wrappers and, following the instructions on their package, soften them and lay them flat on either a cutting board or even a towel. If you put them on a cutting board, I would just ensure that about an inch of the end that is closest to you is hanging off so you can easily grab it. Then, start filling the center with cooked vermicelli noodles, shrimp, lettuce, carrots, avocado and mint leaves! So refreshing and yummy!

When you feel you have enough “stuff” in the middle (remember, you do have to be able to wrap it up without puncturing the somewhat-delicate rice paper wrapper), fold in the sides, take the end closest to you and wrap it around, kind of tucking it in around your stuffing and tucking underneath to get a nice, tight wrap, and then roll it up!

I just want to end this post with a little…. inspiration. I feel is is quite a juxtaposition sometimes, the brightness and happiness that is making food and the beautiful images I try to put out into the world, with some of the darkness that is going on around us. It is, quite frankly, hard to stay positive and “bright”. All I tell my children is: Be the happiness in the world. Go out and make someone happy. Just one person. And have a goal that you are never the reason someone had a bad day. If you can do that, you are spreading more joy into the world than you probably know. Part of what I love about what I do here is to put out those bright, beautiful plates of food, send them out into people’s kitchens and hope that they somehow do some good in the world – either directly or indirectly.