charlotteann

I promise I have been eating soup every day, but there hasn’t been much variety. A friend and I tried to make some peanut curry soup the other night, a recipe I found in Mollie Katzen’s The New Enchanted Broccoli Forest. She went to my school, you know. Anyway, it’s a vegetarian cook book and we agreed that the soup could have used some delicious chicken protein. The fried banana topping was probably the best part of the soup, which I have yet to photograph (it’s still sitting in some tupperware in the fridge). Aside from the peanut curry, I’ve been eating mostly ramen with various add-ons, like tofu, cilantro, scallions, Sriracha sauce, and mushrooms to help spice things up. Even without such relish I would still love that ramen, and at $0.39 a pop I can’t really complain.

San Francisco’s Tenderloin borders/engulfs/fades into Little Saigon, home to several banh mi shops, pho houses, and hole-in-the-wall markets. The quality and price of produce varies amongst these stores, but I’m usually looking for weird sauces and noodles. I picked up some tom yum soup paste a few weeks ago and while it’s extremely high in sodium, it really does taste like the stuff you’d get at a Thai restaurant. All the galanga, lemongrass, and whatever else is in there is all condensed into a brick red paste that smells faintly of shrimp (also in there). I added tofu, mushrooms, scallions, and cilantro. Before this challenge is over I plan to attempt to make my own tom yum, but probably not until I run out of ramen.

I also made a grilled cheese sandwich (possibly my next 30 day challenge…)