Quick Soup

The last month, as you will have noticed from the marked decrease in blog entries, has been busy. I’ve been back on an inpatient service, meaning that I’m back to only have one day off in seven, averaged over the length of the month. Since we get the switch weekends off (the weekends between services), that means we get 3 days off during the month; this brings the grand total to 5 days. As I have undoubtedly whined here before, and I’m too tired to take the time to look that up right now and reference it for you, 5 days/month is not enough. More specifically, one day at a time is not enough to both accomplish some relaxing and some grocery shopping/laundry/checkbook balancing/cooking/sleeping/studying. Arguably there is not enough time in the world for that second list, but one day each week is not even enough to gets started. This has resulted in an unfortunate dependence on eating random meals at the hospital (thank goodness for the magic of money on my hospital ID graciously put there by the medical school to ensure that I eat), things from my freezer that my mom has brilliantly prepared and stashed away for me, and the crazy stuff I can cook up in the stolen moments between arriving home from the hospital and studying and sleep.

This brings us to the soup. The soup was inspired by two things.

1) The new presence of the Pacific Rim noodle bar in the hospital cafeteria. It’s delicious, vegan (at least if you want it to be), and available at the hospital.

2) This ancient packet of miso soup mix that has been languishing in my pantry for years. I moved that packet of miso soup mix almost two years ago, and I’m pretty sure it had sat in my old apartment for a while prior to the move. I am not one to throw away food that has not really gone bad, and that packet of soup was tormenting me. I could remember that the last packet I ate was not as delicious as I’d hoped, but couldn’t bring myself to just throw it away. So I made it better. I added some random stuff from my pantry (dried mushrooms, dried seaweed, noodles), and it was pretty good. This reminded me that I had a tub of miso paste in the refrigerator that had also spent more than it’s fair share of time in the fridge and would probably actually make better soup.

Miso Soup
3 cups water or vegetable broth
2-3 Tablespoons of miso paste (I used mild yellow miso, you could also use an ancient packet of miso soup here)
dried shitake mushrooms
2-3 baby carrots, thinly sliced
1 stick seaweed kombu, broken into small pieces
1 serving udon noodles (you be the judge here)

Heat the water or broth, add the shitake mushrooms (as many as you’d like) and the seaweed, and bring to a low boil. Add the noodles. I broke them up so that they would be easier to eat. When they are nearly soft, stir in a little bit of the miso paste at a time until you like the flavor of the broth. Add the carrots to the soup, and heat for another 10-15 minutes. The noodles, mushrooms and seaweed should be soft. Enjoy!