Tuesday, March 30, 2010

how i cook soup every morning for my bag lunch



Okay, so technically this "two-minutes-or-less" video is slightly more than two minutes. My bad. But in my defense, the recorded part is about two minutes. It's just the credits that make it longer.

Anyhow. In slightly more than two minutes I show you how I cook soup every weekday morning for my bag lunch.

When people find out how restricted my diet is (I'm vegetarian and don't eat refined sugar, gluten, eggs or most dairy), they want to know what I *do* eat. And a lot of people are intrigued by the fact that I eat (homemade) soup every day for lunch. So here goes...

I make most of the ingredients ahead of time (in other words, they're basically leftovers), and assemble everything right before I leave for work.

For this recipe you'll need :

two cups of a hearty, potato-based soup
one cup of cooked brown rice
some cooked beans (in this video I'm using chick peas and navy beans)
some fresh ginger
some dried herbs and spices
and some salt

You'll also need:

a kettle
a French coffee press
a skillet or sauce pan
a large liquid measuring cup
and some thermoses or other food storage containers

Fill your kettle with water and boil the water.

While the water's boiling, peel the skin off the fresh ginger with a paring knife and grate the fresh ginger with a grater or kitchen rasp. I love lots of ginger, so I usually grate a big chunk.

Put the grated ginger and the boiled water in the French coffee press, and let the ginger tea steep.

Meanwhile, in the measuring cup put the cooked brown rice, the cooked beans, and the soup. Stir everything together.

I vary the seasonings from day to day, but in this video I've added half a teaspoon of dried Italian seasoning, half a teaspoon of whole, dried rosemary, a large pinch of mustard powder and a pinch of garam masala, which is Indian cooking spice mix.

Add enough ginger tea to make three cups of soup. The rice will absorb a lot of the extra liquid throughout the morning, so the soup won't be too watery by the time you eat it for lunch.

Oh, and add a few shakes of salt.

Put the soup in a skillet (which is faster) or a sauce pan (which takes longer) and heat the soup until it starts to simmer.

Put the heated soup in your thermoses, add a spoon, and you're good to go.

What do you do with the extra ginger tea? Drink it like I do, or save it in a jar in the fridge for soup stock. Yes, really.

The End.

Sunday, March 28, 2010

how to cook rapini

Hello beautiful person! Thank you for finding this blog post. Unfortunately I have moved all of this post's scintillating original content to my new blog, here.

Peace out.