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 235: Noodles and Rice

Spicy noodles and tasty salmon rice courtesy of Umai Crate

I think that Umai crate has been one of the coolest things introduced to the world since pre-sliced bread. I know that, for those of you living in larger metropolitan areas, the allure of multiple types of instant noodles and side-dishes is less impressive, but I live in a Maruchan town. Seriously. It's hard to find different kinds of noodle around here. Like - nearly impossible...

So to have noodles from Japanese stores appear on my doorstep every month is a blessing.

The closest legit Asian grocery stores are about... 80 miles away. And I cannot drive. And I have no money. This is the best way for me to get good noodz!

Inadvertent advertisement aside, however, here are two different dishes I tried from Umai Crate this month... uh... last month, technically. Happy September?

(ooh, I'm gonna have to start planning for Falloween 2019!)

I'm not 100% sure what this one was called, but it's Nongshim.
They make the blast-your-face-off spicy Shin Cups.
I knew what I was getting into.

Look, I like spicy food. I really enjoy having that fiery heat toasting my lips and draining my sinuses for hours afterwards. Nongshim foods have tended to hit the extreme upper limit of my capacity for capsaicin. That being said, I had a good feeling about this interesting setup:

You don't cook the noodles in the tray - it's not sturdy enough for boiling water.

Red can be very alarming color to see in foods. In meat, it tends to mean that it's improperly prepared. In vegetables, that means beets (which I don't really like, sorry). In noodles, it means you're going to lose some tastebuds to the heat. And boy, was this a red dish.

I don't know exactly what this says, but... I'm guessing it says "liquid fire".
Because that's what was in it.
Culinary plasma.

The noodles were fairly unassuming - dried and nestled together in their pretty little puck.

A faint, brown rice-y smell rose from them that I found incredibly pleasant.

After preparing (and cooling) the noodles, I was left with a decent tangle of noodz in the bottom of my enormous dish.

They were so slippery that I almost lost them down the sink while rinsing them!

And of course, then it was time to apply the death sauce. I say this because these noodles, man...

I mean, look at how red that sauce is in there. You know that's some prime peppery hotness.

I loved these noodz to death. They nearly killed me, since I was an idiot and ate them in the middle of a week-long acid reflux attack that kept me up for several nights, but they were delicious. The heat felt cold going down my throat. It was like swallowing dry ice (which I DO NOT RECOMMEND). Then the heat would blossom up and set my lips on fire. I think it may have actually given me chemical burns on my tongue, because there are some smoothed-out patches now that weren't there before... 10/10 would eat again. Perfect on a toasty day.


About a week after the noodles, however, I had some leftover rice at home. It was just some long grain white rice that had been boiled and buttered and left in the fridge for a couple days, but that didn't matter to me. I had plans.

Plans that only used one of those bags. The one with the scale/wave pattern.

Umai Crate occasionally sends more than just noodles, after all. Sometimes you'll get a cute kitchen sponge or egg ring. Sometimes it's a spoon or chopsticks. Sometimes you'll get spices or furikake or things you can add to rice!

This time, we had a bag with dried salmon, seaweed, and green tea. I wasn't sure how I'd like it, since I'm not really into green tea (I love the smell, but sometimes I can't handle the flavor). I also wasn't sure how it would go with the butter on the rice.

We were also going to attempt to add the shiso furikake in the smaller purple bag,
but we decided at the last minute to stick with the salmon stuff alone.

I boiled up some water in a kettle, then sprinkled the salmon furikake stuff all over the bowl of rice. I didn't even heat the rice up. I figured boiling water would do the trick.

I wasn't wrong, either.
It warmed up perfectly.

You can't really see the salmon in that shot, but it reconstituted really well. The overall effect of the topping and the buttered rice mixing with the water was marvelous - the rice became more tender, the salty flavor of the butter and the salmon and the furikake seaweed was evened out by the creaminess of the butter, and everything tasted wonderful. There was a faint green tea undertone that was actually addictive, even for me, a tea-hater.

10/10 would eat again. Can't wait for more leftover rice!!!

So that's all from me this week. Sadly, I haven't made a video this week, so we'll have to hope that I get on that for next week :P

Go Enjoy Something!
FC

Survival Sunday 233: Taiwan Mix Soba Sauce

An Umai Crate Adventure

I love exploring Asian cuisine via Umai Crate - they do not sponsor this blog by any means (though I wouldn't say no if they offered...). Every month, a new giant yellow box on my doorstep. Every month, oodles of noodles from Japan (though I've gotten plenty of Korean and Chinese dishes as well). Every month, deliciousness.

The meal I prepped for this blog was Taiwanese with a Japanese spin. I believe it was from the August 2019 crate. These noodles were served cold - which is always fun! Some time, I'd love to find a way to film the process of making cold noodles, because it's a blast, and I think you'd probably enjoy watching me flail around without a colander.

We didn't use the middle packet for this venture, figuring that a Yuzu sauce would be
a bit much on top of the already thick and rich Taiwanese sauce in the first bag.

I believe this is the very first time we've received meat in our Umai Crate, too, so this was an extra neat adventure!

This packet felt heavy and chunky, which sounds very unappealing, I know,
but it was actually pretty neat. Again, I don't think we've ever gotten anything
like this before in previous crates!

They're not soba, not really, but we love these Chinese noodles.
They're thick, salty, and really awesome hot or cold.

The first step in prepping most noodle dishes is, of course, to boil water. In this case, I boiled the water in a saucepan on a stovetop, but sometimes you can get away with a kettle. Here in the US, our power doesn't work the way it does in other countries, so it's actually faster to boil water on the stovetop in a teakettle than it is to get an electric kettle. I know that's not the case in the rest of the world, but like with our ridiculous Imperial measurements, we're too stubborn to get with it.

Here we see the water juuuuuust starting to simmer.

 After you get the water to a boil, add your noodles. I try to fan them out when I can, but... it's not always so easy to do that. If your noodles won't drop into a nice fan, just grab your cooking chopsticks (or, you know, a pasta spoon or whatever you're planning to stir with) and start moving those noodz around. You don't want them stuck to the bottom of the pan! Boy is that a pain to wash up after...

If you can find these Chinese Noodles, you're probably going to be a bit startled at just how... odd the water looks when you're done boiling them and making them soft.

The water in question.

The water from mine became this weird, thick, yellowish slurry that I assume was the result of different proteins cooking out of the noodles or something. Definitely dispose of this with the water running so it doesn't coat your pipes. You also want to start draining your noodles as soon as you feel like they're done enough (that's a subjective thing, dude - some like 'em stiff, others like 'em squishy).

For me, the process is a bit weird, since I don't use a colander. Instead, I just plop the noodles into a bowl and immediately begin rinsing them with cold water. This process is pretty simple, but it's also made complicated by the slipperiness of the noodz. Basically, I fill the bowl with cold water, swish the noodles around, and then carefully drain the water, repeating the process until the noodles are all cool to the touch. Then I gently squeeze the remaining water from the clump of noodles and dump the bowl out. Finally, I return the noodles to the bowl and let them relax, sometimes spreading them around with chopsticks if they're getting sticky.

Cold noodles in a bowl. This is where things really get started, flavor-wise.

Now that your noodles are situated in their environment, you want to get started adding flavor. Sometimes this means a broth or soup that you pour over the top or save off to the side. Sometimes you're adding veggies or meat at this stage. In this case, we had the Taiwanese Soba sauce.

This was a beautiful sauce in real life. It was shiny
and reddish brown with chunks of minced meat throughout.

I don't know if I could ever do the sweet, savory flavor of this sauce justice. Something like a barbecue flavor was balanced with a gentle soy undertone with just enough saltiness and spiciness to really keep you eating. This meal barely made it to the table and it was incredibly tasty. I could probably eat this five nights a week in the summer and be happy every single time.

So that's all from me today. Have any of you tried this or something like it? Let me know in the comments!

Go Enjoy Something!
FC

Survival Sunday 232: Steak and Shake Connection

In which I make Noodles with steak and also make a milkshake!

My mom made steak, which, I may have mentioned, usually means she made too much steak for just her and my father. The leftover steak sat in the fridge for a few days before I finally asked if I could put it out of its misery, and once I was given the go-ahead, I got ready to put it in some noodz!

The Noodz

The Steak!

Some Eggs!

These Noodles came from our August Umai Crate!

Healthy Vegetable Ramen?
Better add some steak.

If you know me, then you probably know I have a somewhat rude and subversive sense of humor. One of my favorite things to do is taking a healthy option and making it as unhealthy as possible - hence adding steak to "healthy" veggie ramen!

Here we see the steak all cut up into strips and soaking in an egg bath

To make this at home, you will need:

• Leftover protein
• Ramen
• Eggs
• Spices and/or onion or garlic powder to taste

Cut the protein into manageable pieces, then crack the eggs into a bowl and scramble them up. Once the eggs are a mostly uniform yolk-color, add your protein and let it soak.

This is also when you add any herbs/spices/powders you'd like.
I believe this is garlic and/or onion powder.

 Next, you're going to want to assemble the ramen packet(s). I set the brick right in the bowl to hold it, but you don't have to. Basically, you just want to be sure what you have to work with!

The contents of the ramen pack

The Noodz

The seasoning packet

The unmarked and somewhat intimidating packet of ?

Cook your ramen according to the package. Since our package was in Japanese, I used Google Translate, and it was well worth it. The cooking instructions were hilariously dire - "Stop fire when strings become untied".

The strings are not yet untied.

Untied noodz with the steak and eggs added in!

If you're curious as to how I kept things from burning on in the pot, I actually floated the steak chunks on top of the brick before things softened up! That way, the fat started to render out of the steak (what fat was left, at least) and into the noodles, the egg bloomed into the broth, and the overall effect was delightfully easy to clean up after the fact!

Once I'd "stopped the fire" (turned off the heat and moved the pot to a cool burner),
I added the broth packet, which smelled delightful and looked really good!

Now came the moment of truth, however - what was in the unmarked packet?!

Oh. It's veggies. The kind you get in Yakisoba.
Sweet!

This meal did not last that long! We got it to the table and it was devoured in mere minutes. Honestly, there is no nobler fate for leftovers than to be cooked up with ramen. The steak had gotten tough in the fridge, but after soaking in egg and simmering with noodles for a while, it softened right up and became just as tender as when it was first cooked! The egg bath is quickly becoming my go-to trick for working with leftover meats.

Now, if you're going to have hot noodles in the summer time, you're probably going to want something to cool yourself off with, right? Of course you are! So please enjoy this week's video:

Hopefully, you all enjoy noodles and sweets in the days to come.

Go Enjoy Something!
FC

Survival Sunday 228: The Aporkalypse Cometh

Sometimes, there comes a time in a person's life when there are leftovers no one wants to eat in the fridge. It may be that you've had a large party in the last few days and one of your entrees wasn't the favorite. It may be that you just had to cook up a large package of something that was about to go bad so you can extend its potential shelf life. It might just be that you kind of didn't succeed 100% at the recipe you were trying, but while the food isn't great it's still edible.

Regardless of the reason you've had the leftovers, you've probably had them. You've probably also looked at them several times over the ensuing days and thought "boy, I do not want to waste food. I'd hate to chuck it, but I'm just not that into it."

So here is the story of how Z and I survived the Aporkalypse.

My mom is a great cook, but pork products are very difficult to keep tender when you're cooking them en masse (or if they're porkchops, but we gave up on those years ago...), and as she still has the mindset of a mom cooking for six or more people, she tends to cook big.

And that's how we ended up with a container of bone-in pork spareribs in the fridge for several days.

Now, I usually love my mom's pork spareribs. They're always coated in tangy barbecue sauce, cooked in the oven in one of her pretty pyrex or ceramic dishes with the flowers and vines painted on, and they're usually really flavorful and good.

For whatever reason, however, these ribs came out tough, bland, and unappetizing. My dad, who usually takes leftovers in to work for lunch, refused to touch them, and so they sat for days in one of the tall Tupperwares in the fridge.

I needed something to cook with. We were out of meat or meat substitutes that I could bring with me to the kitchen where Z lives, and I wanted to cook. I really, really wanted to.

My choices were thus: I could try my best to make bao buns with the pork ribs, I could attempt pork floss with them, or I could make soup. Since I only had just so much time, the seven hour process of making the bao just wasn't going to work, and since I was not confident in my abilities to remove the bones and properly fry and pound the meat, the floss would have to wait for another time, too. Pity - both would've been great.

Instead, I got the biggest pot with a handle I could find - the one we usually use for mashed potatoes, and I dropped all of the ribs inside. Then I added about 2 cups of chicken broth and dumped in some soy sauce for good measure (probably 1/4 cup, to be honest, and that was a bit much). Then I let it simmer and boil for several hours while I did my blog and drew. That's right, this was a Thursday endeavor.

Here they are with the bones still in, simmering merrily away on my stove!

After several hours simmering away, I started probing the once-tough meat with a slotted spoon. The spoon sank into the meat, so I used it to fish out the bones and set those aside. I should also mention that these ribs were fatty as heck, which made their earlier toughness even stranger.

The ribs are now de-boned and swimming in... far less liquid than before...

I let the pork soup sit on the stove for another hour or so to cool down before dumping it into the same Tupperware it had come from. After washing the Tupperware, of course. I'm not gross.

Here's where things get... weird.

See, I don't visit Z on Thursdays, more often than not, so I wasn't going to be bringing the soup over then. Instead, I waited a day, then brought it over. It took a couple of tries to get the right-sized pot, but then, when I tried to pour the "soup" out, I found it had completely congealed. That's right. I'd simmered all of the broth out, leaving only the rendered fat and soy sauce. How unappealing!

But we saved it with water, more soy sauce, and some frozen corn! Ah, frozen corn, most noble of the bagged freezer aisle veggies. Blessed among the grasses. Yes, corn is a grass.

Regardless, we let that simmer until the pork was beginning to shred into nothingness, and then we went completely mad.

We added a brick of ramen. These were buckwheat soba, so they were pretty umami to begin with, and when we added the packet of flavoring to the soup, it was even better. The seaweed and extra soy flavors really brought out the flavor of the pork, and with the subtle barbecue flavor from their first cooking, this was a really pleasant meal

Even if it looked faintly terrifying.

So why do I call it the Aporkalypse?

Well...

Remember how I mentioned that my mother cooks like there are still half a dozen people living here?

Yeah. Only two people ate ribs the night she cooked them.

I packed four or more servings of pork ribs into this weird noodle stew, and we absolutely felt it. For days. That's way too much meat for two people!

So my only caution for you all is this: if it looks like there's a lot of food, then there probably is a lot of food, and therefore you should try to consider whether to hold some off for later or just invite at least one more person to eat!

...

I'm totally making it again someday, though.

Maybe with more curry flavor than bbq...

Go Enjoy Something!
FC