Jenmenke

Road Warrior

edamame

Meatless Monday Three

Ridiculously Simple Miso Soup

This is not the Meatless Monday recipe I had planned to share. It is, I admit, a really LAME recipe to share, given it’s simplicity. And the fact that it hardly constitutes a meal.

I think many would say, “Why even bother posting Miso Soup?”

Well. I’ll tell you why.

Warning: Tangental information approaching.

I love miso soup, but I only ever get it when I go to have sushi. Which isn’t very often. I knew I could make it, but didn’t figure it was that practical, having miso paste and tofu in my fridge when I am the only one who would probably ever eat it. But with the advent of Meatless Mondays, it would make the perfect easy Monday lunch! So I set about to gather up the ingredients to have on hand.

And I looked.

And I looked.

It was not nearly as easy as I was led to believe it would be.

I am spoiled with the availability of ethnic ingredients at even the po-dunk grocery stores I frequent. Twenty pound bags of jasmine rice, real — from Thailand — green curry in a can all ready to go for a quick evening meal, etc. And by the way, I know it’s from Thailand because a good friend of mine lived there for several years and turned me on to it! It’s Aroy-D brand.

Anyway, the miso paste was elusive. Byerlys and Lunds were out of it the two times I was there during December. Cub didn’t carry it. I finally found it at Byerlys after the holidays. I figured the seaweed in the miso soup was just nori, but it could be Kombu (?). Who knows. Nori would have to do because everyone has nori. Dashi, a type of fish stock used in miso soup, however, I STILL can’t find!

Lord knows I am not going to make a special trip to an asian grocery deep in the heart of Minneapolis just for dashi. So, last Monday, I wondered if I could just go ahead and make it without the dashi. I gave it a try, instead giving my miso a dash of fish sauce, which I always have on hand. And threw some other stuff in that isn’t normally found in miso soup. Or at least the miso soup I have had up until now.

It was really, really good!

So, I snapped a picture and attached it to a post on twitter.

I have something to say about twitter. I should probably write a whole post on twitter. (In fact, maybe I will do just that). But here it is in a nutshell:

GIVE ME A TWITTER BREAK.

It is NOT the “oh-so-touchy-and-feeley-connection experience” you keep hearing about. At least it isn’t for me. And I don’t believe for one minute that it is for half the people who are saying it is. In fact, it INFURIATES me because I feel like there is something WRONG with me that I don’t seem to have the success and good feelings about it that everyone else seems to. And I’ve been on it for almost two years! I was way ahead of the curve! WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME? *pant, pant*  Rant over.

I do have people I follow and who follow me that I genuinely like and have fun little interactions with. A few. Like about 20. That’s 20 people out of somewhere around 350.

People are always saying how “valuable” it is and how amazing it is that you can ask a question and get instant answers.

Really?

Not me.

Two weekends ago I tweeted

“Desperately need new jeans. Used to wear 501’s. Switched to Lucky Riders and Lil Maggie. Need v long inseam but not too tight. Recommend?

Not one reply. Not one. No one even made fun of me, which I surely deserved.

Most of the time I feel like I am tweeting to no one.

So what’s the point?

Oh who the Hell knows. And yet I keep on doing it. Probably some egomaniacal need to blast out personal information. Yet another chance for psychoanalysis, for sure.

(I told you it was an unrelated tangent).

But bringing it back around, like I always do: last monday I tweeted a picture of my miso soup and said

“My first attempt at miso soup ever. So good! Even with no dashi!”

And I got a TON of (well. a ton compared to normal) replies asking for the recipe, which I gave out — in less than 140 characters, because it is that easy:

“2T red miso paste, 2c H2O, 1T nori-flamed, 1/4c diced soft tofu, dash of fish sauce, salt, chili flakes, sesame oil, green onions!”

So I figured if there was interest on Twitter, there would be interest here.

Plus — and this almost never happens — we are not able to sit down to dinner as a family this entire week. And I’ll be DAMNED if Dave is going to miss Meatless Monday again, being that book club was on monday, soccer was on tuesday and he is out of town the next two nights. So I am holding off on a true-blue, full-blown, meatless monday recipe until I can torture us all. Together. As a family. As it should be.

So, without further ado,

Ridiculously Simple Miso Soup (without the Dashi!)

(this makes quite a bit for just one person’s lunch. If you want less, halve the recipe like I did the next time)

  • 2 T Miso Paste (Mine is red, because that’s all they had. I have no idea what the difference is)
  • 2 cups water
  • 1 T thinly sliced nori (first “toast” it by running it over a flame (stove burner) a few times until it is bright green)
  • 1/4 cup (or more) SOFT tofu diced into 1/4″ cubes (you can use firm, but I had soft for the first time and it is WAY better than firm in miso.)
  • dash of fish sauce
  • 1/4 t chili with garlic sauce (or a dash of red chile flakes)
  • 1-2 T sliced green onions
  • dash of sesame oil
  • Anything else you might want to add: edamame, rice or cellophane noodles, side of rice…

Add the miso paste to the water and heat, whisking to dissolve the paste completely. I think some recipes call for you to strain the broth after this step, but I didn’t. Because I’m lazy. And it was just fine.

Once dissolved, add nori, tofu, fish sauce and chili (add frozen edamame and noodles here if using). Simmer gently for about 4 minutes. Add the green onion and simmer for another minute. Then drizzle with sesame oil and serve.

Resist the urge to tell your son, when he asks what it tastes like, the thought that immediately pops into your head:

Dirty feet.

Yum. I love miso. But that is, indeed, what popped into my head.

Day 7 and Conclusion. And, yes, we are… Panning for Gold

Wednesday, 8.26.09.

Cold night, for sure. We’d guess it dipped into the 30’s, but quickly warmed up with the sun. Dave came through again, this time with coffee and fried potatoes with onions and chicken sausage. It was good, but had the added benefit of using up some heavy groceries. You gotta love that!

Our fate for this day was sealed on day two, early in the trip, when Charlie and Jennie were complaining about always having to go horseback riding. Dave, ever the Yes-Man to Morgan was goading me by asking, “Well? What do you want to do? I haven’t heard you offer anything up.” Very confrontational, indeed. Never one to bow under pressure, and wanting very badly to burst Morgan’s smug bubble, I blurted out — having just passed a sign that said “Rock Shop” and getting a great idea — “I WANT TO PAN FOR GOLD!”

Instantly, like some magic dust sprinkled from the sky, Charlie came out of his Firestar book catatonia  (fill in underlined area with any of the following: iphone, Gameboy, Calvin and Hobbes, Garfield, Call of Duty 4) and said “Panning for gold? Panning for Gold? Where? What do you mean? Did you say panning for gold? Can we? I want to pan for gold.” And, he pretty much adopted that as his mantra until this morning, when — you guessed it — we were scheduled to pan for gold.

Ironically enough, I was excused from the exercise when I volunteered to make tacos and pack up the camper for the long drive home. A seriously brilliant move. I had an enjoyable hour to myself, chopping and packing and organizing.

Ampitheater Campground, Ouray, CO

There wasn’t much information offered up when they all returned, so I suspect the panning wasn’t all it was imagined to be, but Morgan wasn’t pissing and moaning about it either, so it couldn’t have been that bad. Charlie bought a geode and cracked it open and it turned out to be a very perfect and cool one, so all-in-all, he seemed quite satisfied with the outcome of the morning.

While waiting, I had cooked the last of the edamame (why can I not remember how to spell that stupid word?!). My GOSH we brought a lot along! [note: it’s a good thing, too. Friend and frequent responder to this blog, Michelle, took a great liking to this particular garden crop of mine and shared it with all of Watertown both in my absence and after my return. So I was happy to have had any at all. On the up side, I have spread the good and healthy news of soybeans in the home garden.]

I all but force-fed the pods to the kids and when that didn’t work, hid piles around the campsite telling myself the little chipmunks would just love it!

We were all hooked up and ready to go, pulling out for the trip home around 12:30 pm. We drove north to Montrose, then east on hwy 50 toward Gunnison. Incredibly, we passed the very place I had been just thinking of where we bought the Green Tea ice cream on the way out. I could not believe my luck. I’m not an ice cream person, but this stuff was amazing. (Don’t let the sign sway you, the green tea was much better than the pad thai frozen yogurt. At least I think it was.)

I opted out of the Pad Thai Frozen Yogurt.

We also stopped to fish in Salida along the Arkansas River. Morgan caught a rainbow (or something that looked like a rainbow) on her first cast! She had another one on right away on her second cast, but lost it. Everyone was so excited to get their line in the water, but that was pretty much it. I think, when trout fishing (and I’m pretty much an expert on this subject), you gotta keep moving. Why do I know that? Well, something tells me that the trout know when the Loud Family is fishing in their neighborhood.

First Cast!

First (and only) FISH! Rainbow?

We were back in the car for a few hours, and then a stop in — and this really was serendipity — Canon City at a big Shell Gas Station to microwave our taco meat (a new low for us), and pull all my chopped veggies from the cooler to eat at a picnic table in their parking lot. I say serendipity because when Dave and I were cooking up this plan and trying to sell it to the kids (who love this driving trip almost exclusively for the chance to eat at crappy fast food joints on the way out and back), I said, “We can heat the taco meat up in a microwave at a gas station. It’ll be easy!” And Dave added, “Yeah. Maybe we can find one with some picnic tables nearby.” At the time I was thinking fat chance on that. Honestly, I can’t think of another gas station with picnic tables in their parking lot. And yet, there we were in Canon City.

Taco at the Gas Station. Try it, you'll like it!

Charlie was so worried people would think we were homeless and feel sorry for us. He was very relieved when I went to get my big camera to take pictures that he told me to keep it around my neck since, after seeing the camera, people would realize we really weren’t homeless after all.

Almost done!!!

Actually, I just read the rest of the journal and it’s really boring stuff about who drove how long and how great I am because I drive so much, blah blah blah. You all already know that by now, so I will spare you the details.

Within an hour of home, I made one more co-pilot navigational error, setting us back a whole five minutes. Morgan is freaking out and hanging over the seat, fretting about making the bus for her soccer game at 4pm and wondering whether or not she owns the right color socks for the first game.

It’s official. The vacation is over. And I’m back in Hell.