cold nights, warm soup

We spent day outside in the uncharacteristically sunny (but very cold) weather...until the sun set around 4. Then we came home and had this warming mushroom soup. I had some black eyed beans soaking, so I put them on to boil with two finely chopped onions and some bay leaves. When they were just about ready, I threw in a few cloves chopped garlic, some marmite, some white wine, sage and thyme and a whack of dried wild mushrooms, along with a bunch of leftover cooked brown rice. Then, just before serving it, I added a dash of tamari and a few drops of truffle oil. That's it. We ate it with salad (mustard greens, cabbage, fennel, pear in maple syrup/mustard/wine vinegar and pepper). This is really easy. You can use pretty much any combo of white bean and cooked grain you have lying around (wheat berries or barley are yum too). The only thing that you really *need* are dried mushrooms, or if you're lucky, a whole lot of fresh wild mushrooms. You don't actually need truffle oil, but if you're lucky enough to have some, use it for crying out loud. There is a special place in culinary hell for those who let truffle oil go rancid because they're continually "saving it for something special". What the hell are you waiting for? Oh, and go easy on the marmite/tamari, you don't want it to ovewhelm the other tastes...you can always add more at the end of cooking, along with some black pepper if your mushrooms aren't *ahem* very good. If you have some fresh parsely lying around, I'd strongly suggest stiring a good handful of chopped parsley in at the end, but I didn't have any and it was just delish anyways, thank you very much.

warm, comforting music: jazz lounge

Also, from a few days ago when I was far too stressed to post (or make anything requiring more than about 10 minutes of cooking), a superquick dinner. You see, I have a pumpkin problem. I love pumpkin. LOVE IT. And I accidentally bought one that was too big. I couldn't stop myself. It was just so... orange. So I baked it up (along with a few potatoes and some onions, cuz it never hurts to have those around) on the weekend and put in in the fridge and ate pumpkin stuff all week, which turned out to be a great thing, since I hardly had time to eat this week, let alone cook, I was so damn busy. This is from the last day of pumpkin. This is buckwheat crepes (buckwheat flour, ground flaxseeds, soured soy milk, water, salt) filled with mashed pumpkin, baked onion, nutmeg, pepper and nooch. Side of greens with *lots* of garlic and lemon.

music: guten tag. wir sind helden.