Chicken Vegetable Soup

I made this today and it is quite tasty. It’s my own recipe. I generally don’t like fennel, but it’s quite good in soup.

Chicken Vegetable Soup

• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 1/2 chicken breasts
• 1 onion
• 4 cloves of garlic, chopped or mashed, as you please
• 1/4 teaspoon chopped/ground fresh ginger root
• 1/2 jalapeno pepper
•  about 1 cup chopped tomatoes
• 1/2 cup split green peas
• 8-10-ish cups of water, or however much broth you want.
• 2 cups chopped cabbage
• 1 carrot
• 1 stick celery
• freshly-ground mixed pepper
• about 1 tablespoon Kosher salt
• as much fresh ground black pepper as you like
• 1 tablespoon dried oregano
• 1/2 tablespoon dried basil
• 1 teaspoon fennel seeds

Heat the olive oil on medium in a soup pot. Chop up/slice/grind your ingredients as you please. Add the onion, garlic, jalapeno, ginger, and chicken to the oil. Grind some mixed pepper on top. Stir it occasionally. Once it’s cooked a little, add the tomatoes, oregano, basil, and fennel and let it cook until it’s saucy. Add the peas, cabbage, carrot, celery and water. Let it simmer, covered, on medium-low for about 2 hours. Add the salt and pepper as you please. Cook it for another 15 minutes or so, then let it cool and eat.

If you have room in your pot, add a zucchini.

Like many soups, it’s even better the next day.

Mexican Black Bean Soup

My favorite roommate from college was Kaitlin D. For over half of the semester, we ate little other than her Mexican Black Bean Soup. She’d make a big pot of it and we’d just stand over the stove, eating it out of the ladle. It’s fucking amazing. If we were eating it out of bowls, we’d add a dollop of sour cream and mix it in. So tasty.

So this is her exact recipe. There are some notes of mine below it:

Kaitlin’s Black Bean Magic

• ¼ cup olive oil
• 2 cloves garlic minced/smashed
• 1 medium onion chopped
• 2-3 tomatoes chopped
• 2 med potatoes chopped
• 1 jalapeno pepper minced
• 2 cans black beans
• 1 can corn (optional but makes it hella bomb)
• as much cilantro as you want
• 1-2 tablespoons cumin
• 6 cups water or broth
• 2 tablespoons lime juice or to taste

1.    Heat olive oil in soup pot, add onions, garlic and jalapeno pepper and fry a couple minutes. Add tomatoes and potatoes and continue to fry until the mixture becomes saucy (not sassy).
2.    Dump in beans, corn and water/broth and bring to a boil. Simmer for 10-15 minutes. Add cumin, lime juice, salt and pepper, and cilantro. Simmer for another 10 minutes. Remove from heat and add cheese, sour cream and chips.
Enjoy!

Isabelle’s Notes:

• If you use dry beans, soak them the night before then boil them either in the soup or before using them for a good 4-5 hours, until they soften. I like to make the entire soup then leave it on Low to simmer while I go climb trees or go to the gym or whatever. If you live in an apartment where the management comes in ALL THE FUCKING TIME to spray for bugs and change the filters and make sure you don’t have pets and shit, then don’t leave it simmering while you’re at work all day because they’ll think you’re trying to burn the place down or something. I haven’t done this yet, but this is why I can only make this soup on the weekends. Or I could use canned beans, whatever. This is a long note.
• This recipe is meant for a big soup tureen. I’m talking like 3-4 days’ worth of soup for two people. If you’re making it in a small pot, use common sense and cut it down to half or so.
• I like to add a chopped carrot and two sticks of celery or all the tops from a bunch of celery plus one celery stick. And a sliced zucchini.
• Chicken works well in this, too.
• It’s a soup; adjust it as you please.
• It’s twice as good the next day.

Sesame Deviled Eggs

You know, “deviled” should have geminate <l>s because the single <l> brings the <i>, /ɪ/, to the front, leading <deviled> to be pronounced [di,vaɪ’ɫd] instead of [dɛ’vɪɫd,]. As you can see, the stress also switches to the second syllable with one <l>.
In other words, it should be “devilled eggs”. Yes. Spell-check put angry red dots beneath it to tell me I’m wrong.

Man, now every time I see “deviled” in this post, I think [di,vaɪ’ɫd] which makes me think of “defiled eggs” instead.

Anyway, as you know, if I’m making food that isn’t a dessert, I’m making it for my, myself and I. We don’t mind crappy presentation as long as it tastes good and makes our tummies smile. We are generally lazy when it comes to feeding ourselves and would rather eat Ants on a Log or trailmix every day for the rest of our lives than spend over 15-20 minutes cooking food. Unless it’s something we can put on a pot and simmer and forget about it and take it off in 8 hours and eat it. We attribute this characteristic to our habit of rising at 0415, working out twice a day, and getting home at about 1900.

Sesame Deviled Eggs

• 2 hard-boiled eggs
• 1/2-1 teaspoon fish sauce (add more for more saltiness)
• 1/2 teaspoon sesame oil
• roasted sesame seeds
• freshly-ground black pepper, to taste

If you’re lazy, put the eggs into a bowl or plate and chop them up. Drizzle and sprinkle the other ingredients on top and toss it. Eat it. If you’re not lazy, take out the yolks and mash it with everything else, to taste. Stuff it back inside the albuminoid (while we often call it the albumin, it technically contains albumin, making it an albuminoid). While I recommend putting the seeds inside the yolk mash, you could sprinkle more sesame seeds on top for garnish.

I’ve got a super special awesome Mexican Black Bean Soup I’m making right now. I’ll post the recipe tomorrow as well as some homemade flavored instant oatmeal to bring to work in case you get tired of all the shit that Quaker or the grocery store’s brand put in their packaged ones.

But for now, it’s time to go climb trees in Nashville. Ta-ta.

Chickpea Soup

This is a nice little soup I made this morning because I only have cabbage in my fridge. When I was in Greece last summer, we ate mostly beans cooked in a variety of ways, but always with olive oil and oregano.

Since I used dried chickpeas, I had to start the night before. You could use canned chickpeas, but I find that the flavor is not as nice and they have a lot more salt.

Chickpea Soup

Yield: About 3 servings, depending on what you consider a serving.

Ingredients:

• 1 cup dried chickpeas or 2 cups cooked/canned
• 1/2 cup onion (any variety), chopped into large chunks
• 3 1/2 cups water
• 1 1/2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
• 1/2 teaspoon freshly-ground black pepper
• 1 teaspoon dried oregano
• 1/2 teaspoon dried basil (or about 3-4 fresh basil leaves, torn up)
• a dash of salt

If you’re using dried chickpeas, soak them the night before in 3 cups of water. In the morning, rinse them (if you’re using canned, rinse those as well) and add 3 1/2 cups of water and the onions. Simmer them for about 30 minutes in a pot with the lid on but tilted (even if it has a steam hole), then stir in the oil and seasonings. Let it simmer for another 15 minutes, or until the beans are the texture you prefer. Consume.