Survival Sunday 306: Spinach For The Unwell

In Which I Made Simple Food For Sick People

At some point in everyone's life, they get sick. Sometimes, you're not the only one who gets sick, too, so that makes feeding yourself and others pretty dang hard. That's what happened to me a twice in the last two months. First, someone I care about was sick, then I had my migraine episode last week. Today, I'll tell you how I handled both kinds of illness with food.

The first illness was marked by severe headache, fever, nausea, and a general malaise. One day of misery, then gone. The intention was to make something filling but not too potent so that the ill party wasn't going to barf.

We chose some spinach soba from our Umai Crate along with a soup base that seemed like it would be hearty enough to be worthwhile but not so strong as to upset anyone's stomach.

The broth is on the left, and yes, it's kumamoto soba

As you can see, the somen is meant to support some veggies and spice, but we couldn't do spicy that day.

It didn't have much of a green color to start with, to be honest

I prepped the noodles by measuring out the appropriate amount of water and boiling it. I should have rinsed the noodles, but we were getting pressed for time, and I just wanted to get lunch over with. If I ever got these noodles again, I'd rinse them, but they weren't too salty in the broth despite the lack of washing.

And they were a bit more green when they were done cooking, too!

Overall, the spinach soba were very much appreciated. They were filling, and the soup base was rich enough to be flavorful without being so rich as to overwhelm. The next day, we were able to appreciate the noodles more, since we weren't sick anymore, but in the moment, we were just happy to eat.

As for the migraine?

The problem with my migraine experience is this: all of my senses become extremely over...sensitive? Is there a better way to say that? Regardless, light is brighter, dark is more absolute, colors are more vivid, sounds are clearer and more robust, touch sensation is vastly increased, taste is more extreme, and scent...

Scent is horrifically powerful.

I usually love the smell of a good chicken sandwich, but one whiff of my mother's lunch sent me charging into the bathroom to abandon the three sips of coffee and two ibuprofen I'd taken earlier. But I'm not one to let a little headache and nausea get me down (it felt like my skull was imploding on top of the nausea), so I got myself situated and headed out. After gingerly nibbling some water crackers and taking more ibuprofen, I was able to take a nap and sleep the worst of the migraine and enjoy the rest of my day, but for me, migraine food is: a little caffeine, bland white foods (especially crackers), water, maybe a plain bagel with cream cheese.

The cream cheese was a stretch - it's usually a significant trigger for me - but by the time I busted in on the bagel, I was well on my way to being better.

So that was my culinary adventure recently. Some noodles, and trying not to overdo it on a migraine day. The winter is always the hardest for me, health-wise. I don't get the proper vitamins and minerals from my diet, going outside is a crapshoot for whether or not I'll be getting dampened by the clouds, and I'm always, always stressed about the state of our streets and sidewalks. This is a terrible combination.

But what about you guys? What are your go-to sick day foods?

Go Enjoy Something!

FC

Survival Sunday 302: Kumamoto Spicy Ramen

New Year, New... Noodz?

It's time for me to tell you about some tasty ramen from Umai Crate!

That's right, the first thing I've made up for the blog this year isn't some sort of scratch-made treat or easy access meal, it's another random pack of noodles shipped from Japan. If you're studying abroad, live in Japan, or have access to a proper Asian market here in the US, however, you may be able to find this Kumamoto Spicy Ramen, which, spoilers, is delicious.

Here's the handsome package!

Ideally, you'd have some fried meat, some veggies, and an onsen egg to go with this delicious, thick-brothed ramen, but I was feeling lazy and hungry and just wanted to stuff my face with delicious noodles and spicy flavor!

A slightly blurry picture of what was in the package

In this sleeve of noodles, you get a robust handful of noodles (which are slightly salty when dry and are addictive to snack on while you wait for the water to boil), a powder flavor packet (the red one), and a packet of hot oil - probably hot sesame oil, if I had to guess.

The instructions from Umai Crate!

I looked up the conversion for 500ml because I didn't know if I'd have access to a measuring cup with ml instead of "cups" (thanks US Imperial system...), and it turns out that 500ml is about 2 cups (2.11 to be more accurate...).

Lucky me, the kitchen I was using had a multi-measure cup that I used to pour about 450ml of water into the pan, since my partner's not really a broth person and I was in the mood for some extra-thick soup. You can, of course, cook your noodles how you like.

I let the water boil on the stovetop in a fairly small pot (I figured that since it was a simple packet of noodles I wouldn't need much of a pot, and I was right). Once the water was bubbling around, I put the noodles in.

I don't break my noodles when I put them in the pot. I know some people do that as a space-and-time-saving method (shorter noodles cook faster, I guess?), but I'm more of a naturalist and allow the noodles to slowly wilt into the pot like a grumpy toddler slipping into dreamland.

Except I don't want to eat a toddler, and I really, really wanted to eat these noodles.

And once the noodles had been in their spa for a couple of minutes, I grabbed the red packet.

Opening the soup base on one of these Umai Crate packs is always exciting. It's basically a party every time, and you never know what you're going to smell, really. This time, the rich umami flavor came across in the scent of soy sauce and some meaty undertones. It smelled salty and savory and delightful, and I made sure to sample some of the powder that was left behind on the packet when I dumped it in the noodles. It was absolute heaven.

Salty, faintly sweet from the small amount of sugar in the soy sauce, meaty, soy sauce-y... perfection.

I turned off the heat and stirred in the flavors.

The water was almost completely opaque once I added the broth packet.

By now, the kitchen was filled with the wonderful smells of cooked noodles and rich broth, so I dumped the whole thing in a large bowl.

Look at that glossy, oily sheen!
Gorgeous!

Of course, there was one more step to add to this wonderful ramen - the spicy oil!

I tore open the sachet of oil very carefully, because that stuff is no joke to get in your eye, man. I promise, chili oil is a nightmare that you'll never forget when it's in your eyes.

Thankfully, though, it cooperated perfectly and drizzled into the bowl without fighting me at all.

Beautiful.

The oil itself has a very neutral flavor, since it only exists to lend spice, but once it combined with the actual noodles and broth? Call Guy Fieri, because that's a one-way-trip to Flavortown.

Oh god. Why did I write that...

But seriously, that's some addictively spicy, perfectly rounded deliciousness right there. If I could, I'd eat that once a week. It's the flavor equivalent of a sweater that, yeah, can sometimes be a little too warm, but it's so comforting to wear that you can't stop putting it on, even though it's mid-April and you might get heat stroke!

Mind, this isn't crazy hot. It's spicy, don't get me wrong, and if you get it down the wrong pipe, you're going to feel it for a while, but this isn't Shin Cup spicy in any way. It's not even as spicy as a Tijuana Mama sausage. It's just... comfortably spicy. It's the kind of spicy you keep going back for.

If you do live somewhere that carries this Kumamoto Spicy Ramen, then please do pick it up. Even if it's just to shoot a pack my way...

mmm....

noodles...

Go Enjoy Something!
FC

Survival Sunday 252: Parmesan Spaghetti Ramen

In Which This Is My Last Noodle of 2019!

Well, here we are, two days out from the end of the decade. It's been a wild year, guys!

I figured we'd round out the year with the last of our East-Meets-West noodles - a spicy Parmesan pasta! This came from another one of our Umai Crates, and we had very high hopes for it, since the last few Italian-inspired bowls had been so freakin good. This was a pretty standard setup, too, which was good, because I was already tired from putting together Christmas gifts and we made this a couple of weeks ago!

As you can see, it warns you that it's spicy, but it's also welcoming and cute.
Very Japanese.

It's a 3-minute bowl, so I pulled out the packets and poured in the hot water and let it sit for the full three minutes.

Which was just enough. If you like your pasta very soft, go for 3:30.

Since we're al dente people, it was time to drain the pasta and add the flavor packets! I was at a loss at first as to what the green packet could have been, but that's because I don't read instructions very well, lol.

On the left is the tasty spicy tomato sauce in the red packet.
The green packet on the right was the Parmesan cheese!

A word from the wise: Don't fiddle with your lid too much before you drain the water, because it will detach too much, and then you'll be constantly fighting to keep the noodles in your bowl without scalding your fingers.

Overall, I'd say it was worth it, though!

Almost finished! Look how quickly that cheese started melting into the noodles!
Seriously, there was about 50% more of that before I picked up the camera!

A closeup so you can see just how good this looked...
Or you would see that if the color balance wasn't bad on my phone...

I should probably mention that we had this with some leftovers from a really great Christmas party we'd gone too earlier that week (the day before, in fact!)

Since there was a fair amount of food in the leftovers box, we picked out some of the choicest sausages and added those to our spicy Spaghetti Ramen experience!

10/10 do recommend!

In the end, the sauce was just tomato-y enough to get the tomato-ness of it, but not so much so that it overpowered the meat, noodles, and spiciness! Actually, I was unimpressed with the spice-factor at first, but it was a sneaky spice that crept up on you the more you ate it. I really like this bowl, and I thought that, while there could always have been more cheese, what we got was really nice and went well with everything.

Overall, I'd have to say that this particular fusion was not only successful, but it's something I'd buy regularly if it was available locally! Really nice.

That'll about do it for me, today, guys.
Go Enjoy Something!

FC

Survival Sunday 249: Bibim Men!

In Which I Try Some Instant Bibim-Men!

Some friends dropped off a package of Instant Bibim Men, and I was eager to try it. What's Bibim Men? Well, imagine if you took Bibimbap and Ramen and made them have a baby.

What's Bibimbap?

IT'S HEAVEN IN A BOWL!

This is Bibimbap

Korean cooking has mastered the art of "I have it, so I'll eat it" in a way few cultures have quite approached. Bibimbap is basically several veggies and/or meats, stir-fried, and placed in a bowl. A runny fried egg is placed on top. There might be rice or noodles on the bottom. And then there's the sauce.

Korean sauces are notoriously delicious. Korean barbecue is some of the best on earth, so of course I'm going to love a Korean breakfast with a barbecue-style sauce that you pour on top!

And then there's Bibim Men.

See, Bibim Men takes that sauce and pours it onto ramen. Perfection!

But perhaps not enough for a single meal.
We had some yuzu soba left over from an Umai Crate, and had that as well!

Unfortunately, it being winter, veggies are harder to get hold of (plus, I was feeling lazy), so I had some leftover chicken that I added to the mix.

The Chicken.

I boiled the chicken and noodles together - can't remember if I did an egg, but I don't think I did? I should've. Regardless, I boiled the precooked chicken to heat it up.

It smelled great!

I also used the chicken noodle water to reconstitute the soba, but that's not really important right now.

The Bibim Men Sauce.

Once the noodles were cooked, I drained all the water and put all of the noodles and chicken in a bowl, where I eagerly snipped open the sauce packet and began to pour it out.

Apologies for the autopsy photo quality, but it was dark in the kitchen...

Thick, dark, fragrant sauce spiraled down onto the bed of noodles and chicken and my eyes widened significantly as I took it all in. Oh. My. God.

This is an amazing dish.

It's so amazing that, yeah, it didn't even quite make it to the table to get photographed before we dove in!

The sauce is sweet, spicy, savory - delicious. It buoys the noodles from bland to grad and pairs so perfectly with chicken that it was as though it was preordained! Honestly, I'd pay money to eat this at a restaurant, it's that good. I can only imagine what a 100% home-made version would taste like, and that's without veggies. Ideally, I'll get more and make it with bean sprouts, some stir-fried spinach or collards, carrots, mushrooms, peppers, etc. And I'll put the over easy egg on top and let the yolk soak through.

Just thinking about it is torture.

And yes, the soba was never more than an afterthought, which is a pity.

Because yuzu soba is always good.

If you've been wondering what yuzu tastes like, it's basically what happens when all the citrus fruits get together and create a Frankenflavor. It's... citrus. There's not really any other way to describe it. It has the freshness of grapefruit, the zing of lemon, and the mellow juiciness of oranges, and it's delicious. It pairs so well with the earthy flavors of a chicken-tinged soba broth and the thin-but-firm noodles. Definitely worth making up, but it does pale by comparison to the Bibim Men, which was the absolute star of the show.

I think that'll do it for me today.

I've made myself hungry :P

Go Enjoy Something!
FC

Survival Sunday 248: Butter Spaghetti from Japan?

In Which I Make Japanese Spaghetti... For A Third Time.

Now, I've made these kinds of fusion dishes before from Umai Crate, and there's always a hint of trepidation. Sometimes you'll get tasty bolognese, sometimes you'll get weird watery konjac noodles. Thankfully, this week's attempt was some tasty soy and butter spaghetti!

But of course, I couldn't just have the spaghetti, so I decided to use some leftover steak we had in our fridge and do my best to follow the instructions.

I melted about a tablespoon of butter in a frying pan and fried up the slices of steak.

A few things to note about cooking with butter:

• Butter can and will snap and pop at you, so if you're like me and a wimp about these things, clear the kitchen of other people first. Then you can't be a jerk to them when you burn yourself.
• Butter can and will get grease stains all over your shirt when you inevitably burn yourself.
• Butter burns fast, so keep an eye on that pan!
• Butter is freaking delicious.

With the meat heating through, I took the ingredients out of their package and took a look at what I was working with.

I was a bit nervous about this spaghetti, since it was so bloated-looking. I was afraid it would be too soft.
It was not!

The package for the Butter and Soy Sauce Spaghetti!

The instructions on the back of the package were in Japanese, but luckily, Umai Crate came through for us and had their own instructions in their pamphlet.

It said to just... dump the noodles in? Actually, it said to dissolve the noodles in the pan.
I figured that meant "detangle" rather than "melt into oblivion"...

And thankfully, they detangled pretty well!

Once my noodles were separated and mingling with the steak in the pan, I added a couple tablespoons of water to help loosen up both the pasta and the oncoming sauce!

Sadly, everything moved way too fast at this point and I got no pics of the sauce going in, but it was thick and rich and smelled really good. It was butter and soy sauce. Of course it smelled good.

It smelled and tasted so good that I literally couldn't get a picture without my burned hand shaking lol.

Now, as a side note, the steak had been stored with some leftover rice, so we reheated that and added some tasty shiso furikake we'd also received from Umai Crate.

Which was also very tasty!

So how did the spaghetti taste?

The Butter and Soy Sauce Spaghetti tasted like heaven. Warm and buttery with that umami soy sauce undertone, it was a gloriously mellow experience. If I'd remembered to add some black pepper, it might have been even better, but utterly unseasoned (aside from the steak), it was still fantastic. The steak paired perfectly with the noodles, so it was overall a very good experience. I'd pay for that in a restaurant.

It was so good that I'm planning to look up a recipe for Soy Sauce and Butter spaghetti to make at home...

How about the furikake and rice?

Well, the rice was your standard grocery store rice that had been cooked several days prior and left to sit in the fridge. Once reheated (and with a bit of steak juice soaked in from the storage), it was pleasant on its own. I should mention that it's my mother's habit to add butter to a pot of rice as it steams and cools on the stovetop, so there was butter in this, too. The salty butter flavor was perfect with the herbal, ume plum-hinted flavor of this furikake, and it was fun to watch the white rice slowly get stained magenta.

If you ever see that particular kind of spaghetti in an Asian Market, absolutely pick it up! And, uh, if you accidentally buy too much, feel free to send one my way ;)

Go Enjoy Something!
FC

Survival Sunday 247: More Noodz

In Which I Try More Umai Crate Noodles

So, you know how adding stuff to noodles usually means good things? Uh.... unfortunately that didn't work out very well this time :(

Left to right: Healthy ramen, Tanuki Soba, and Canadian Bacon

We've never had too much luck with the health food ramen with the guy on the package - it's usually pretty bland. Tanuki soba, on the other hand, is usually really good! I mean, it's soba, so what's not to love?

And this kind had both crunchy puffs and fried seaweed! Score!

It was easy enough to prepare the soba, since that's just an "add hot water and let sit" kind of cup. I was a little annoyed that you can't see the fill line on this one, so I probably added a tiny bit too much water. Also this is maybe the second or third time we've received this kind of Tanuki Soba alone, so... not the most adventurous of Umai adventures...

I set about 2.5 cups of water to boil in a pan on the stove, ladling out enough to cook the Tanuki once it was hot enough. Then I set to work with prepping the healthy ramen so that it absolutely wasn't. My partner tore up the Canadian bacon and set it marinating in spicy sesame oil and the last of our soy sauce.

A simple marinade but one that smelled incredible!

Then I cracked some eggs into the water with the noodles and let those cook before dumping in the Canadian bacon. I should've added in the marinade, but hindsight is 2020...

The noodles cooked up fine, and I added in the flavor packet, but... it didn't really smell like much of anything.

This should have alerted me to the coming meal.

The flavor packet in any ramen should smell like something, but this one was just... vaguely sweet/salty smelling. It should have been strong enough to smell without stuffing my nose into the foil packet.

Sadly, even spicy curry, ramen pepper, and garlic powder could not save this ramen :(

The healthy ramen was, without a doubt, the most disappointing ramen I've had that didn't come from Wal-Mart.

It had absolutely no flavor, the noodles were limp (despite cooking for less time then they should have!), and the broth was basically taupe-colored water. We had to add salt.

At least the eggs were fantastic, though! Possibly the best eggs I've ever scrambled into ramen!

As for the Tanuki Soba? It was fine.

The Tanuki soba still had that nice buckwheat flavor with a dashi that, while not the strongest, was still flavorful and pretty decent. And the veggies were really pleasant, too!

So basically that was a bit of a flop of a meal :( That's too bad, since I was looking forward to the flavors.

As a consolation for the middling-to-disappointing fare from this blog, here's a picture of my cat in full snuggle-drunk blep mode:

yeaaaaaaaah, them's good tummy rubs....

Go Enjoy Something!
FC

Survival Sunday 245: Missing the Point of Vegan Noodz

In Which I Make Vegans Very Unhappy - Sorry!

Let me begin by saying this: I love vegans. I love vegan food. I love the tenets upon which veganism as a cultural movement are based. I am not, however, a vegan myself. I enjoy too many animal-based products and legitimately cannot afford to enjoy a 100% plant-based diet without being 100% miserable and living entirely off of tinned veggies, which... aren't ideal.

So when we wound up with the Samurai Ramen - a 0 animal ramen with no garlic or onion or msg (the last three of which I actually quite like) - I was a bit skeptical.

Because for me, garlic and onion are nearly my lifeblood.

And generally, "healthy" ramen is pretty bland even with the addition of either garlic or onion.

But it did look pretty amazing...

So we decided that the best way to round out this wonderfully well-intentioned noodle concoction was to add both deli chicken and egg.

Which is pretty morbid when you think about it...

Deli chicken breast, which I sliced up and soaked in the egg

I enjoy the occasional vegan ramen, to be certain - they're usually beautifully put-together with some really fascinating soup bases and flavor combinations. However, I was... incredibly hungry the day we made this, and I find these ramens to be usually a little hard to fill me up. So I decided that the animal proteins would serve as filler here. Delicious, delicious filler.

The noodles were thin and only lightly salted, and the soup base
was liquid, so I couldn't open it ahead of time to check how it smelled.

I was very, very excited to try this ramen, so I started up a pot to boil on the stove with about 1.5 cups of water for each sheaf of noodles (3 cups total). Meanwhile I grabbed a small knife and sliced the chicken into thin strips and cracked a pair of eggs into a bowl with them. Then I broke the yolks and got everything mixed together. At this point, my partner decided that the "no garlic/onions" thing was not for us, so in went some garlic powder and a little curry powder as well. I loooooooooove curry, so I was all for that.

No joke, I actually kind of wanted to just... dig into this as it was.
And I'm paranoid about raw eggs.

So here's the thing about adding eggs into ramen while it cooks: The water immediately clouds as the proteins in the eggs meld into the boiling water, and the noodles become coated. This means that every bite is filled with eggy goodness!

Though it does look a bit... nightmarish.

I really liked how the boiling action changes the texture of the chicken lunchmeat! Like with ham or roast beef, boiling the precooked chicken breast toughens it and makes it stand up better against the smooth slickness of the noodles.

I mean, look at this... it's gorgeous!

The soup base was very flavorful - almost intensely so. It had a lot of soy sauce flavor and was filled with umami. I may have to cry bull on the "no MSG" thing, since MSG comes from soy sauce (and mushrooms, and other umami foods). That's like saying there's "no vitamins" in orange juice...

Regardless, it's a really good ramen even on its own, but making it a ramen egg drop soup makes it even better! Since there were so many ingredients, we only wound up with maybe a half cup of liquid out of three cups of water! I cannot believe how good it was, too. Warm, rich, and incredibly satisfying, if you can get your hands on some Samurai Ramen, then you absolutely should.

So thank you, Umai Crate. That was awesome!

Go Enjoy Something!
FC