Thai Chicken Egg Rolls + Beach Day

Posted by Lauren

Remember how my friends and I went to Yosemite a bajilion days ago to celebrate my birthday?

• We arrived late Friday night, enjoyed BBQ Chicken salad + champagne
• Saturday included a gorgeous day hike to Upper Yosemite Falls
• We cooled off in the Rainbow Pools
• Our night involved dancing + drinking at the Iron Door Saloon

And that leaves us with Sunday…

With the help of a few friends (I vaguely remember Amy, Fran, Kerry… who else?), Sunday’s breakfast was assembled on Saturday night after the Iron Door. A little overnight prep goes a long way!

Overnight Baked Apple French Toast
Serves 8
From Terri F. on Food.com

Loaf of french bread, thinly sliced
3 apples, chopped
1/2 stick butter
3/4 cup brown sugar, packed
2 T water
1 T pumpkin pie spice (all we had at the cabin – make your own version with cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, etc.)
4 eggs
1 1/4 cup almond milk
2 t vanilla extract

1. Melt butter in a skillet and add the chopped apples. Cook/stir for about 5 minutes.
2. Add brown sugar, water, and cinnamon cook/stir for 10 minutes until apples are tender.
3. Spoon mix into 13×9 baking dish, cover the apples with bread slices (trim slices if you need to).
4. Beat eggs until foamy and then whip in the milk and vanilla. Pour egg mixture over the bread slices, making sure that it is completely absorbed.
5. Cover the dish with plastic wrap (or tinfoil, if that’s all you’ve got ;) ) and refrigerate overnight.
6. After a night in the fridge, remove the dish from the fridge and let it sit while your oven preheats to 375.
7. Bake, uncovered, for 35 minutes. When the bread is golden and firm, remove from the oven and let sit for 10 minutes before serving.
8. Place a platter on top of the baking dish and carefully flip. Enjoy!

We enjoyed our breakfast on the outdoor patio with syrup and cherry butter. That’s right, cherry butter.

As soon as we finished breakfast, Kyle and I started prepping lunch to take to the beach. These quick + delicious egg rolls were inspired by Iowa Girl Eats‘ Buffalo Chicken Egg Rolls.

p.s. two recipes in one post heck yessss

Thai Chicken Egg Rolls
Serves 8
Inspired by Kristin @ Iowa Girl Eats’ Buffalo Chicken Egg Rolls

1 package egg rolls, such as Nasoya (on right)
4 chicken breasts (about 1.5 lbs of chicken should feed 8)
Asian stir fry veggies (2 frozen bags to save time)
Thai peanut sauce
Olive oil
Greek yogurt (+ leftover hummus)

1. Preheat the oven to 425 degrees.
2. Cook the chicken in a skillet with a little bit of olive oil and the thai peanut sauce (as much as you like). Cut into cubes.
3. Steam the veggies
4. On each egg roll, add a dollop of greek yogurt (I had some extra hummus to use up, so I mixed it in with the greek yogurt… highly recommended.)

5. Arrange some of the steamed veggies on top, then put a few pieces of chicken on. Drizzle more thai peanut sauce on top before rolling your egg rolls.

6.. Wet all four corners of the egg roll. With the egg roll facing you as a diamond, fold the corner closest to you up and over the stuffing. Next, fold the left and right corners in. Then continue rolling the side closest to you away from you, until the egg roll has completely flipped over. (IGE documents the process really well over on her blog.)

7. Line a baking sheet with tinfoil and spray generously with cooking spray.

8. Arrange the egg rolls onto the baking sheet with the folded edge facing downward. Bake in the oven for 20 minutes, flipping half way through.

While those baked, we packed up the car for the beach!

There’s a marina in Groveland with a small beach, picnic tables, a volleyball court…

Look, a blob! Complete with trampoline and an inflatable log that is near impossible to cross without falling in.

We spent a good hour or so on the blob with all of the little kids. Kit managed to run across the inflatable log, but Kyle never made it ha ha…. It was really hard to crawl out onto the blob, but Amy had master skills. Unfortunately, one pesky kid would always crawl out onto the blob while others were positioned to fly, totally ruining it. Despite that kid’s spidey skills, he refused to be flown into the air and would slip into the water after taking all the time crawling out to the edge. Strange kid.

A few of us took out the paddle-boards. There’s Amy!

And, off course, there was lunch! The egg rolls tasted great, they had a nice crunch, were a little creamy (woot greek yogurt), and the nutty flavors were an obvious win in my peanut-butter-lovin-heart.

Before everyone took off, we made sure to grab soft-serve cones. 5 seconds after Kerry grabbed hers, I saw the ice cream fall off her cone in SLOW motion. Speaking of spidey senses, I instantly stuck out my hand and caught her ENTIRE soft-serve in the palm of my hand. < < Friends always have your back when your ice cream is in peril!

I’m so thankful that my mom and David let me borrow their lake house for the weekend and that all my friends were able to come! What to do next year for the big 2-5?

-Lauren