Quiche Soup

Today is a snow day for the Seattle area, and being stuck at home is a perfect excuse to experiment with food. I was in the mood for a light breakfast soup to showcase my available frozen vegetables, and the end result turned out a LOT better than I'd expected it to.

Here's what I did:

Filled a small saucepan with water, added a little frozen spinach (about 1/2 cup), a little frozen vegetable medley (about 1/3 cup), and two extremely heaping tablespoons (closer to 4 tablespoons) of red-white miso paste. (Miso is my current favorite soup base, with ham hocks following in 2nd place.) I set the pot to boil until everything was hot and the miso was dissolved.

In a separate ramekin, I whipped two eggs and slowly tempered them by stirring in a little of the boiling soup. I continued to do this until the eggs were up to temperature and could be safely dumped into the soup without scrambling them.

The end result is creamy, beautiful to look at, and strikes a lovely balance between tasting rich while being low-calorie.



Estimated calories:
160 kcal for the two eggs
30 kcal x 4 tbsp = 120 kcal for the miso
15 kcal spinach
30 kcal mixed veggie medley
--------------------
= 325 calories for the whole pot of soup. Awesome!


If anybody actually decides to emulate this kitchen experiment, I have some advice:

1. Only use vegetables that you would willingly eat in an omelet or quiche. In retrospect, the vegetable medley was a questionable choice, but the spinach was spot-on.

2. The soup might benefit from the addition of ham. I was in the mood for a vegetarian breakfast and I found that the miso added enough savory saltiness for my own palate, but ham is delicious and would make the soup heartier.

3. Cheddar cheese should have been sprinkled on top. I didn't do this today (trying to keep it low-ish-calorie), but if I were serving a version of this soup to guests, cheese would definitely enhance the flavor in important ways.

4. Buttery toast also goes well with the soup. I did eat that, and I was glad that I did. Quiche benefits from crust, and this soup does well when paired with bread.

5. Fresh cracked pepper helps to dress it up, but please use pepper sparingly so that it doesn't overwhelm the rest of the dish. The same might be said for hot sauce, if anybody's feeling bold and wants to make the soup with hot sauce.

6. Please refrain from the spellings "eggsperiment," "eggcellent," et cetera. (Egg cetera?) I managed to restrain myself for the whole article, and I'm eggstremely glad that I did. Wait... NOOOO!!!!!

Technically Not Food: Homemade Face Mask

Salutations!

I have just done something cheap. It's not exactly food, but it was made using food ingredients, so I'm writing about it here.

Having found face mask prices to be a little spendy, I decided to DIY myself some pore-drying relief tonight. I am right now, as I'm writing this, wearing a homemade face mask made of baking soda and lemon juice. (Don't worry, a little Googling has assured me that lots of people use baking soda and citrus masks.)

Why it's delighting me:

1. Initially, when I squirted a little lemon juice into the ramekin of baking soda, it fizzed and expanded like a root beer float. I waited until the show was done before I smeared it around on my face, but it was still fun to watch.

2. It was assembled using ingredients from my pantry, making it nearly free.

3. I can already tell that the too-oily sides of my nose are drying out a bit, and this feels AWESOME. The face mask is nearly done, and has gotten all dry and crackly now. Sure, it looks ridiculous on a human face, the way all face masks do. But again, my skin feels like the oils in the pores are being absorbed, and that's my face mask bottom line today. Mission accomplished. (So far.)

4. Isn't lemon supposed to brighten skin or something? I'm not entirely up on these things, but it sounds like something a beauty article would say. (This is a food blog, so I'm not going to indulge in TOO much non-food homework. The lazy treatment is as good as this beauty experiment is going to get.)

5. It looks and smells kiiiiiiiiind of like lemon curd.

Photos:

Looks like lemon curd, right?

Looks like low-quality age makeup once dry.

BRAND NEW WARNING!!!

Update as of 1/18/12:

One of my friends read the blog (someone read it?!?), tried the mask, and said that it made her face sting, so she had to wash it off quickly. Therefore, I want to encourage caution. Every face has its own sensitivities, and this recipe definitely has some citric acid in it.

For what it's worth, I have good results with this recipe when I use it as a degreaser before my standard face wash (i.e. on a seriously unwashed face), and it has helped noticeably clear up my skin. It actually feels like a relief, on the occasions that I've used it. But I've only used the mask when I've had a lot of natural oils on my face, which in retrospect probably helps to protect my skin from the baking soda and lemon juice. On a clean face, it might really, really sting or burn.

Once again, I encourage caution.

This Is Not the Cookie Dough I Was Promised

Salutations! Long time no see. (Tech issues, I swear.) Happy New Year!

I have finally returned to my beloved food blog on this holiday day* to lament about a phenomena that I feel entirely ambivalent about.

I am eating a meal-replacement protein bar that is, I suppose, inspired by cookie dough. It looks like I am eating a tube of cookie dough, it really does. It's the right color. It has chocolate chips in it. Even the texture is pretty close to spot-on, apart from the crunchy/grainy/crystalline bits that I don't mind, but that do kind of break the third wall. But the flavor?!? I'll tell you in just a moment.

This bar had a high vitamin content that I didn't bother to record. And it boasts 28 grams of "Metamyosyn (R)" protein. I haven't Googled Metamyosyn, so that's still a mystery. But for all that I've bothered to decipher, it seems like as adequate a meal-replacement bar as any, more-or-less.

What it is NOT, is a good "cookie dough as a meal" replacement bar. Oh goodness no. It tastes like protein powder, and that flavor is so strong that it overpowers the taste of what I hope (but did not confirm) are chocolate chips. I personally recommend that the company responsible should switch to using a darker chocolate for the chips, so that the chocolate flavor won't be as overpowered by the taste of the protein powder.

Do I recommend eating one of these meal replacement bars instead of a small dish of raw cookie dough? I guess. But this recommendation only comes out of my concern for public health, with regard to the consumption of raw eggs and the awesome/unhealthy combo of refined sugar/refined flour/raw eggs. (Which I myself still love to eat, but in moderation and with an acceptance of the possibility of food poisoning.)

* This blog was written on January 1st, 2012, but was posted online the day after. Tech issues, I swear again!