Miso Soup

Miso soup was one of the first things I learned to make on my own. It remains one of my favorite things to have for breakfast or part of a dinner. I have even stretched it into a one-pot meal all on its own. I'm going to include both of these in this post. Pictured at left is my one-pot meal version of miso soup.

When I first started making this, miso paste was not easy to find. It pretty much meant a trip to the local Asian import store. Thankfully, though, it is getting easier to find. Generally, it can be find in the cold food section of organic grocery stores. If that isn't an option where you are located, you can always get it through Amazon.com.

This would normally be made with dashi or instant dashi, but this is my vegetarian version. To make with instant dashi, replace the vegetable broth and water with 3 cups of water and 1 1/2 teaspoons of instant dashi.

It's a very simple but very enjoyable dish, and there are plenty of variations to the dish that you can try. Just about anything that is used in Japanese cooking can be added. Shitake mushrooms are one popular addition, though not one I enjoy due to a lifelong detesting of any member of the mushroom family. Pork can be added as well, but then it is tonjiru or pork soup. Adding rice to miso soup makes a kind of nekomeshi, but this is not really done in polite society; it best translates along the line of "cat food" or basically the leftovers you would give your cat from the morning's breakfast.

Basic Miso Soup
A recipe from Kat

Ingredients 

• 2 cups of vegetable broth (or 2 cups of water and 2 cubes of vegetable bouillon)
• 1 cup of water
• 1 long section of wakame seaweed, cut into tiny bites, or spinach, cut into tiny bites
• 1 12-oz block of firm or extra-firm tofu, cut into bite-size cubes
• 1 to 2 Tablespoons of white miso or to taste
• 1 green onion, chopped

Directions

1. Reserve miso in a bowl or large cup. Miso must NOT be boiled.
2. Mix water and vegetable broth in large stock pot. 
3. As it approaches boil, add tofu cubes.
4. Once the soup reaches a boil, scoop some of the hot liquid out into the miso and mix into a fine paste. While mixing, add wakame seaweed.
5. Remove the pot from heat and add miso, stirring well to mix. 
6. Top with green onions and serve hot.

One-Pot Meal Miso Soup
A recipe from Kat 

Ingredients

• All ingredients as above for Basic Miso Soup.
• 1 carrot, washed and skinned, shaved or cut into matchsticks
• 3 oz of somen noodles

Directions

1. Cook as above for Basic Miso soup. 
2. Add the carrots and somen noodles with the wakame. They will not need to cook long. Somen noodles ideally need to be cooked no longer than 3 minutes.

Vegetarian French Onion Soup

I'm actually generally better at taking photos than this. The photos you are seeing here are ones I've taken for Facebook or Google+ to brag to my friends see if anyone wanted the recipe. Most of the photos are done on my iPhone with one to four cats in the photo somewhere; they can be such helpful food critics!

This recipe is a favorite of D's -- and one of mine as well. French Onion Soup was not something I thought about loving until going vegetarian meant giving it up.

I've played around with this recipe for months now, trying to come up with one that was absolutely what D and I were looking for: the taste of French Onion Soup, not terrible for calories, and vegetarian. Of all the versions, this one is my favorite. It is also one of the closest to Bella Bella's, a restaurant here in Tallahassee, FL. This will not be the last of their recipes I tried to puzzle out; their Bubble Bread is definitely on that list.

I do sometimes add toasted bread cubes or croutons to this recipe. They tend to be very good additions. Italian bread and French loaves have been particularly great with this dish. Most of the time, though, I do prefer to eat this soup plain, so that is how I have .

French Onion Soup (Vegetarian)
A recipe from Kat


Ingredients

• 1 medium onion, sliced
• 2.5 cups of vegetable broth
• 3-5 cloves of minced garlic (to your taste)
• 3/4 cup water
• 2 tablespoons of butter or margarine
• 1 tablespoon of flour
• 1 tablespoon of soy sauce or vegan Worcestershire sauce (I prefer the latter myself)
• 1/2 teaspoon of dried parsley
• 1/2 teaspoon of dried thyme
• 1/2 cup of shredded Parmesan cheese

Directions

1. In a medium sauce pan, melt the butter over medium heat and add the onions. Stir until tender, about 20 minutes. Add minced garlic cloves at about the 10 minute point.
2. Add flour, stirring constantly so that it does not stick. Slowly add broth and water in stages; this helps to prevent lumps of flour from forming. 
3. Add soy sauce, parsley, and thyme.
4. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium-low (if your stove burner dials use numbers, around a 1 or a 2) and simmer for 20 minutes.
5. Serve hot with shredded Parmesan cheese.

The Four Things About Weight-Loss That Folks Often Forget

I have a support staff meeting this afternoon that I really, really would like to skip, but plan to suffer through because I'm a good person like that. Plus, it's one hell of a way to kill a full hour at work without actively seeking distractions such as Cracked or Wikipedia. However, while not preparing to sit for an hour and be actively bored, I decided to make a small post in regards to the four things I think are important to remember when trying to lose weight that tend to go by the wayside as soon as the going gets rough.

1. Portion control is not just a suggestion.
   So you've decided to lose some weight, which seems to be everyone's number 1 New Year's resolution. You decide that you need to make some changes in how you eat, always a step in the right direction.
   
   However, while changing the type of food you eat is a method of dropping the weight, sometimes it's as simple as changing how much you eat of something.
   
   For example, you can go on an all-carbs diet, or a no-carbs diet, or completely vegetarian or vegan and still find that you can't drop the pounds. The problem isn't necessarily what you eat, but how much of it you're consuming at a time. And restaurants in the U.S. don't make this easy. I can't recall just how many times K and I have been out dining and can't finish what's on our plates since it's about twice what we would serve ourselves at home.
   
   The best thing, so far as I'm concerned, is to follow the rule of "everything in moderation." Yes, by all means make dietary changes if that helps you towards your goal, but if you want a small slice of cake or a miniature chocolate bar have it by all means! Just don't make that your entire meal or something you do automatically every day twice a day. I try to keep these sort of little treats something I only do once a week (at most!) or even a once-a-month treat.
   
   
2. Exercise is just as important as dietary changes.
   Have you ever tried to just diet and not do some sort of exercise along with it? It makes losing weight about twice as difficult as it could be, from what I've experienced.
   
   Saying "exercise" doesn't mean you have to join a gym or spent a couple hundred dollars on home gym equipment. The simplest way to get some exercise in and help in your journey to losing weight is to walk. Even 30 minutes of walking a day can burn up to or more than 100 calories, plus it's good to help build endurance.
   
   Although illness has kept us down for the past couple of days, K and I tend to get up at 5:00 every weekday morning in order to walk at least 20 minutes (which is a full mile on the route we follow). More often than not, we get in a full 30 minutes (1.7 miles) or sometimes 40 minutes (2 miles total). We're planning to add in a minute of jogging for every 4 walked by mid-December, and slowly building from there to a 30 minute jog by the middle of 2012. It's a slow process, and I know it, but I'll stick with it.
   
   
3. Measure loss in inches, not just in pounds.
   So you've been working out and eating healthy, and you can see results in the mirror. Yay! Feeling good about yourself and your new body, you step on the scale to see how much weight you've dropped - let's say you started off at 165 pounds and are trying to lose 25 of those. You're pretty sure that you've lost at least 10 of those and are eager to see the number pop up--
   
   And your scale must be broken, because it's telling you that you're currently 163 pounds. All of a sudden those smaller portions and working your ass off seem to have been a waste of time, and you're ready to say "to hell with it" and grab that cheesecake you've been denying yourself.
   
   Don't do it!
   It's very easy to get discouraged when the scale keeps fluctuating up and down on you, I know. Boy, do I know! I may not have mentioned it previously, but I'm trying to get down to the 130 pound range - the weight I was in my early 20s - and drop from a size 14 (and not those fake-ass "new" sizes where in another couple years I'll be a size 4 at the rate the industry keeps changing the labels) to a size 10. In the past month my weight has hovered between 155 to 160 pounds, and it is discouraging.
   
   However, the thing to keep in mind is that while you burn fat exercising - even just walking - you're also building muscle. And muscle is more dense than fat, so if you work off 10 pounds of fat you're likely replacing it with at least a pound of muscle; the harder you work out, the more quickly you build that muscle, and the faster it shows up on your scale.
   
   We're also stuck, as a society in the U.S., on the idea that Body Mass Index is the end-all-be-all ideal. Be aware, however, that it's an imperfect unit of measure; after all, if you weigh 158 pounds and work out a lot, the BMI counts that muscle weight in your total and may tell you that you're overweight.
   
   The best unit of measure to see progress? Checking in the mirror and seeing yourself trim down is awesome, but pull out that tape measure and check your waistline. Even as you build muscle and lose weight, you lose inches as well. Like I said above, my weight keeps fluctuating up and down, but my waistline is starting to slowly trim down. No matter how badly I feel when I see the digits on the scale creep up again, I still feel damned good looking in the mirror and seeing the results.
   
4. Results may vary, but are definitely NOT instant.
   This is the big one that nearly everyone forgets about. Most people who make that "lose weight" resolution start off strong in January, but have all but given up by the end of March because they aren't seeing any real results. Sure, they've lost a couple pounds, but shouldn't three months of hard work show more than that? Time to just give it up and try again next year.
   
   I say again, don't do it.
   Television shows like The Biggest Loser and its ilk has put many people in the mindset that weight loss must be instantaneous for it to be working, and the expectation is that a few short months of working out will have you ready for bikini season before Valentine's Day if you're doing it right. The fact of the matter is, however, that losing weight and getting in shape is a process; and like many processes, it takes time to yield results.
   
   I think my favorite story of weight loss was a blog I stumbled across once called "The Slowest Loser." The blog's author, a man in his thirties if I recall correctly, had made a goal to lose something in the neighborhood of 40 pounds and decided to do things right. He changed his dietary habits and took up running, and chronicled his progress. The blogger did indeed lose the 40 pounds... over a course of two to three years.
   
   And that's the thing to remember, really. If you want instant weight-loss results, you've likely already doomed yourself to fail in your goals. Sometimes it's better to take the long and winding road, enjoy the scenery, and eventually get to your goal without making yourself crazy.

So next time you think that you're not getting anywhere with your diet or workout regime, stop and try to remember these four little things. It's difficult, I know, but anything worth having in life usually isn't.

Barley and Vegetable Soup

Through some impressive mishaps regarding the grocery list, hurried shopping, and general forgetfulness, somehow D and I have ended up with more pearl barley than we really know what to do with. I'm not sure I can accurately guess how much we actually have, but it has to be over 5 pounds. With that much barley in the house, it seemed wisest to try to find uses for it.  Since Autumn is trying very hard to arrive in Florida, soup seemed most appropriate.

Most of the soups I found using barley were variations of Scotch Broth. Since I am mostly vegetarian and D doesn't eat beef very often, I had to discard all of those.

Finally I happened upon one that would be very easy to edit and make vegetarian-friendly: Food.com's Shuzbud's Warming Barley and Vegetable Soup. It turned out to be even better as a breakfast than as a dinner, so that's what we eat it for. It does a pretty magnificent job of keeping us full all morning.

So this is my version of this soup. I usually double the recipe, so that we have enough for breakfast for a few weeks, but this is the basic version.


Barley and Vegetable Soup
Originally found here by Shuzbud on Food.com.

Ingredients

• 1 cup of pearl barley, uncooked
• 8 cups of water
• 6 cubes of vegetarian vegetable bouillon 
• 3 carrots, peeled and chopped
• 2 stalks of celery, chopped
• 1 large sweet onion, peeled and chopped
• 1 can of diced potatoes, drained
• 4 cloves of garlic, minced
• 2 bay leaves
• 1 cube of vegetarian vegetable bouillon, crushed, or 1 tsp of Nature's Seasons

 Directions

1. Rinse the pearl barley in water. You may need to soak it if the package directions call for it. I tried to find "no-rinse".
2. Put the barley, water, and 6 bouillon cubes in a large stockpot (I used a 6 gallon stockpot). Bring to a boil over high heat, reduce heat to low/medium-low, and cover. Cook covered for 45 minutes.
3. Stir in all the vegetables, from the carrots to the garlic. Add the two bay leaves. Add additional crushed bouillon cube, Nature's Seasons, or flavoring of your choice. Cover again. Cook for one hour.
4. Remove bay leaves before serving. Serve hot.
5. If soup is too thick, add additional broth.
   

Greetings from the Co

Good afternoon and welcome once again! As Kat said, it's been a very long time since I've actually used Blogger as well.

Basically, what my posts will consist of for the most part will be exercise and musings about the attempt to lose a few *cough*25*cough* unnecessary pounds I've been having trouble with for a while. Probably dull stuff, yeah, but I'll try to be entertaining!

And now, back to Kat and the recipe portion of this blog.

Welcome aboard!

So, everyone, I'm Kat. Of the authors of this little blog, I'm going to be the one you see doing most of the food talk.

It's been a very long time since I've been on Blogger. I feel like I should say that to start off with. The last time I used it, in fact, it was still possible to host a Blogger blog on your own domain without it having to be a top-level domain, if that says anything.

 I'm hoping to use this blog to post recipes, either my own or ones I've edited. There will probably more of the latter than of the former.

And so, without further ado, it's time to start this blog.