Just Soup

It's been a while since I've posted anything resembling a recipe, so I'm going to fit one more in before we finish out the year.

Before that, I would like to apologize for our lack of a Christmas post. I hope everyone enjoyed their Christmas! Ours was really nice. Nat had to work during the day, but we hosted a potluck with our English conversation group for dinner. Nat made meatballs and her pizza bread. I made my tomato bisque, with some minor alterations (addition of some finely chopped mushrooms and substitution of one Japanese leafy vegetable for another). We still haven't sent out our Christmas gifts or cards yet, but know that they will be on their way...someday.

There was lots of good food at the potluck. As always, there were leftovers, which are just as delicious!

The next few days were mostly lazy, on our part. Yesterday, I walked to the local convenience store to pay the internet bill. You can pay your bills at the convenience store! Isn't that convenient? You can also pay for Amazon.com orders at certain convenience stores and have packages shipped there as well. Amazing! I ended up being lazy the rest of yesterday and buying dinner at the convenience store as well.

Today, though, I made soup. It's somewhat my generic soup, but we had some kumquats on hand and I decided to use a few to flavor the broth (mmmmm!). As long as you keep a regular stock of tomatoes, onions, garlic and keep your spice cabinet stocked like I do, all you should need to leave home for this are the kumquats and some sort of base. If you don't keep some sort of soup base on hand, that is. If you do, all you'll need are the kumquats.

The result is a delicious bowl of soup!

Just Soup
(Today's variation includes kumquats!)
(feeds 3 or 4)

Ingredients:

• 1 Tomato, peeled, diced and mashed
  
• 1/2 a medium onion, chopped fine
• 3 cloves of garlic, chopped up however you like to chop up garlic (I like the bell-shape you get from slicing it, but Nat likes to smash it for stronger flavor. I go back and forth between methods. If you like, you can too!)
  
• 5 Kumquats, washed (if you have extra, you can eat them whole - peel and all)
  
• Soup base (I used 2 chicken "consomme" cubes which are quite a bit like bouillon cubes, but you could easily replace it with a can of broth or some sort of vegetable soup base.)
• Olive oil
• Water
• Salt - to taste
• Pepper - to taste
• Ground sage - to taste, though I think I used about a teaspoon...I think
• 1/2 tsp. Turmeric
• Oregano - a couple dashes
• A good pasta for soup (smaller pastas like orzo or alphabet noodles are best, but spaghetti or angel hair can work if you break the noodles down into small pieces before adding them to the soup)

Directions:

1. Make sure you're thinking loving, happy thoughts. This soup needs to be made with love, even if it's not in the ingredients list.
   
2. Peel two of your kumquats, mash and remove the seeds. Add the kumquat juice and pulp to your mashed tomato and set aside.
3. Saute your onion and garlic in olive oil until they start turning brown (I usually do this in my soup pot to cut down on dirty dishes).
4. Add mashed tomato and kumquat to the pot, stir a few times and start adding water. I usually use the adding water step as an opportunity to clean out my ingredient bowls and not waste the last bits (get the last of that delicious mashed tomato off the sides and into the soup!). I just fill up my pot to a reasonable level, but since there are several types of cooking pots out there, I doubt that is going to help you much. This recipe should make three bowls of soup, so use as much water as would fill three and a half bowls (to allow for evaporation and pasta absorption). You can always add more if necessary. If you are using a liquid soup base, use that much less water.
   
5. Bring to a boil.
   
6. Slice two crosses into each of the three kumquats you have left. The cuts should be just deep enough to cut beyond the peel and each cross should be on opposite sides of the fruit. Add these to the soup.
7. Add salt, pepper, sage, turmeric and oregano and let cook for about five minutes and taste the broth to see if you need to add anything. (I keep a small sauce dish on hand for this purpose).
   
8. After you have the flavor right, add your noodles and continue cooking until the noodles are tender.
9. Remove the three whole kumquats.
   
10. Serve and eat.
11. Do NOT spill all over the counter!

Okay, so you may spill it all over the counter if you really have to, but just remember that you're going to have to clean that mess up.

I didn't spill this soup, but last week's chicken noodle was almost a waste.

I shall leave you with a picture of Toshiko and me from our Christmas party. Toshiko's the one in Christmas socks.

Of Christmas and Teeth

This temporary filling is weirding me out. It's kind of made of foam or something and I keep messing with it. rawr. I'll be glad when the real one is in after the 25th.

We had a party on Sunday night. Alex played Santa; a bunch of ALTs and Japanese people came. Toshiko gave us a ride (thank you Toshiko!) and it was a ton of fun. Alex made deviled (angeled?) eggs and I made pizza bread, my new favorite pizza-type recipe since pizza dip.

...I should make pizza dip.

Drooling aside.

I got the cutest Snoopy mug!! It comes with a little matching teaspoon! I almost wanted to send it home to Mom but I LOVE IT SO MUCH. MINE. Maybe I'll give it to her when I come home. :)

Our Christmas presents are going to be kind of late. In all honesty, it's really hard to buy presents sometimes, simply because we don't have a car and have to rely on other people to get to places like Mipple (our local department store) in order to do our shopping. I've got a few things for a few people, but I really want to finish out before we do our sending.

If anyone's got anything specific they want, please comment and we'll see what we can do!

I really want to take another trip to Kyoto for shopping and stuff since I think I'm pretty used to the city now, and there's a whole lot of cool things I can pick up there. But every weekend has had something pop up to make it impossible for us to go. Grrrrr.

Though maybe I can find some good stickers in Kyoto, too. I brought some awesome stickers from the dollar store for my classes when I first came here and now I'm almost out of them. They're really weird things like sparkly, strangely colored vegetables. (green carrots, blue pumpkins, purple mushrooms and the like.) The kids just adore them, and the ones here in Japan are cutesy and all but they lack that ridiculous American flavor. Oh well.

We're going to be having another party on the night of the 25th for our English conversation members. The thing that stinks is...I HAVE TO WORK! T____T (that's a crying face). Because the school was closed for so long due to Swine Flu, it cuts into winter vacation. So...work for me. :(

Oh well, it won't be SO bad.

Kyoto And The Difference Between Schools

As Alex said, I've been SUPER busy last week. I've got a student who enjoys inviting himself over to play video games now, and this Sunday he proclaimed that he (and his younger brother, who I teach at elementary school) would be coming over every Sunday from now on. I was like, "Erm. I...might be busy...some weeks." Oi.

Last Tuesday and Thursday I went to Kyoto for an ALT (Assistant Language Teacher - basically we crazy foreigners teaching in Japan) conference with Ms. Matsuda, one of the English teachers here. We had a ton of fun - the conference was illuminating (though some of the speakers spoke TOO FAST for the Japanese teachers!! Holy cow, slow down!) and we got to hang out and shop in Kyoto after it was over.

Shijo-dori and Kawaramachi-dori, two of the huge shopping streets, are definitely places I want to take anyone who decides to visit us. The bus system of Kyoto is intensive as well, but you can get an all-day pass for 500 yen - a little more than five dollars. Kyoto is also one of the most historically significant cities in Japan, as it was the old capital before it was moved to Tokyo. So it has a ton of beautiful gardens and castles and pagodas. HINT HINT. COME VISIT US. I WILL SHOW YOU A GOOD TIME.

Also I found a shop that sells import goods, like.. (gasp) CHERRY COKE and tortillas!! I know tortillas are easy to make, but I haven't done it yet and when I saw them I freaked out. They also had feta there. I bought some for Alex. It was epic.

So on the train home I had Subway (another find -- I had a roasted chicken and avocado sub) and Cherry Coke for dinner. Mmmmmmm....I needed that.

Then, Thursday and Friday I had elementary school to go to. I go to the Angelic School every other Thursday and the Demonic School every Friday.

This particular Thursday and Friday I was given a very clear-cut example of the differences between the two schools. I was teaching both sets of students about Christmas. I'm not allowed to talk too much about Christian stuff, since they ARE public schools, but I focused on the family aspect of it instead of being like, "You get lots of cool stuff and it's awesome!"

Angelic School: A tiny first-grade girl approached me after the lesson and asked me in a sweet voice, "Natalie-sensei, do you know about Jesus? <3" I almost cried. It was the most precious thing in the world.

Somewhat Less Angelic School: The kids got into two seperate fistfights while making Christmas cards. Before lunch, a tiny first-grade girl approached me and asked me in a sweet voice, "Natalie-sensei, why are you so fat?"

Gotta love teaching.