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.

A Weekend with Kiwis

I'll start with the dinner party.

It was really fun! Brett and Shawn (I actually never saw the spelling of either of their names, so it might be wrong) were very nice and talking to them was insightful. I was still frying some of the eggplant when everybody got here, so most of the women came over to watch me cook or ask if I needed help. Brett was the only one who managed to ask in time for me to give a job to. All of the food everyone brought was very delicious. We got to keep half of the leftovers (maybe more, but I know we sent some home with somebody...there was a lot of food) and I just finished them off for lunch today. Everybody helped clean up, which I was really grateful for. I think it's common practice at a potluck, though, since everybody wants to clean their own platters before they take them home. The skordalia and eggplant was a success, as was the spanakorizo and the lemonade. Everyone wanted to know what was in everything. I don't know if it was because they liked it and want to make it themselves or because they just found it to be such curious food.

As everyone was leaving, someone said "See you tomorrow!" I replied in kind, then turned to Nat and asked what was happening "tomorrow"? I had heard mention of going fishing and Nat had heard mention of going to Mipple (a sort-of shopping mall in the next town over), but we never really heard anything conclusive. It was late, so we went to bed. The next day, we woke up and saw that we were being picked up at 1:30. The doorbell rang at 11:30. We then realized that we misread the cellphone email. What we thought was a 1 was actually an 11. Whoops! At least we were awake and dressed (the dressed part was particularly important), but we had just eaten breakfast since we weren't expecting anyone for another two hours. So, off we went, not entirely sure what we were going to be doing or for how long. Most of the group from the dinner party was there, along with Shawn and Brett. We went out for lunch at Mipple, looked around an amateur art gallery, perused a few stores then went to the beach. We didn't expect to be going to the beach, so we didn't bring our swimsuits, but it seems the only people who were planning on it were Shawn and Brett, so we waded and wandered with Ken and Yuuko while the guys swam and the older ladies looked for a cafe. After the swimming was done, we went to the cafe which doubled as a tiny, local-access train station. There was a cat sitting in the middle of the last real parking space, so we got a little creative with our parking. All around the area were persimmon and pomegranate trees. Most of the persimmons were ripe, but the pomegranates were still ripening. There were some grapefruit and kiwi trees here and there, too, but most of those were down the street a ways. When we went in the cafe, there was a table of little old ladies drinking coffee that were moved to an outside table in order to make room for us (I am assuming the ladies volunteered, but it's more amusing to think that the cafe owner commandeered their table). Most everyone ordered cake and some beverage. I didn't order any cake, because I was still full from lunch, but everything was reported to be very delicious. Then, the cafe owner placed a whole cake on our table and told us it was on the house. So, over more cake, we discussed the differences between New Zealand and American English, New Zealand and Australian English, and that all the wildlife in Australia wants to kill people. (I should have mentioned earlier that both Shawn and Brett are from New Zealand. Shawn had Nat's job three or four people ago and Brett is currently an English tutor somewhere between Osaka and Kobe). After that, we dropped Shawn and Brett off at a larger train station and headed home. We flopped for the rest of the day. It's been a full weekend. I don't want to do anything today.