I've been thinking about this.

Soup often comes out rather bland unless you work at it. Most soups get some vigor from adding some kind of acid like lemon or vinegar or sherry maybe wine. Be careful, especially with vinegar, it can be overpowering. Lemon usually works really well. I have a Cuban black beans recipe where a smoked ham shank and sherry make an amazing flavor combination.

Spices of course. Great spices for generic meat/veggie soup are pepper, salt, chili flakes, oregano, bay, basil, cumin. Experiment. It takes quite a lot of spice if you're making a big batch. I have some bags of Penzey's spices and their Turkish blend (tastes Mexican to me) and Greek blend to really well in soup.

Another flavor is umami of course. If your stock isn't concentrated enough you might need to reduce it, which means boiling some of the water out. Or you can use something like fish sauce or soy sauce. Careful, they're potent. Or just add some bouillon like substance.

Other flavors that I think work are smokey flavors, like from bacon or ham or you could cheat and add some condensed smoke (carefully). And another flavor would be something sweet (in some soups). The unexpected sweetness of an apple, kumquats, cranberries.

When you think about Thai coconut chicken soup. It has sweetness from coconut milk, tang from lime juice, savory from fish sauce and chicken stock, herbal flavors from lime leaves and lemon grass and galangal root (ginger can be used instead). The veggies and meat add some flavor sure, but most of the flavor comes from other stuff.

Anyway, those are some of my ideas for zooping up soup.

I bought fish sauce solely based on your comment about using it in scrambled eggs Nancy. So after searching prices and options online (I buy nearly everything online. I have nothing but a super walmart available to me and it's definitely a white-boy store LOL) I bought this 2-pack of bottles of fish sauce. I put them in my refrigerator, looked at them for a moment, blinked, and then said to myself, "PJ, you HATE fish of all kinds. Why did you buy Fish Sauce??" but it seemed like a good idea at the time. I haven't yet had opportunity to try it.

Coconut milk is kind of a pain. Heavy for shipping, expensive locally (and not cheap even via internet), has 'other stuff' in it sometimes to help with thickening et al. I have coconut cream and coconut 'butter' as well as the oil (just pure coconut - tropicaltraditions.com is where I get my coconut and palm stuff). I wonder if there is some way I can use the coconut cream or butter with some water or something to make a coconut chicken curry.

I have green curry in the fridge door I haven't eaten in eons but the individual packages are still in date. I have a tin of yellow curry on the spice rack. (Actually I have no kitchen right now--it's 100% empty except the fridge, as painting of walls and cabinets starts tomorrow--but you get the idea.)

I am currently starving. In my fridge I have LC wrap (gluten, sigh) and deli meat/cheese (because of the kitchen thing mentioned above). Now I am sitting here reallllly wishing I had a cold chicken curry salad LOL. I have only had that once, at my fave Thai restaurant in the city where I mostly grew up (Ventura CA) and I *loved* it. I'm definitely going to have to make this! Thanks for the ideas! And the soup ideas too.

The thing about fish sauce is it doesn't taste like fish. No more than soy sauce tastes like soy.

I'm not suggesting soup recipes here, just ideas for making soup more flavorful.

I think walmart has coconut milk. Do you have any asian markets in your area? They always have it cheaper than anywhere else.

I'm not that great at making homemade soups - but I did come up with one that works very well - don't have the entire recipe here, but it was a chicken soup. The weird thing? What gave it really good flavour happened to be a ton of dijon mustard, some curry powder and a tiny bit of lemon juice!

I agree with Nancy that sometimes soups turn out kind of boring and bland - so you do want to try and zing them up a wee bit.

My local Wal-Mart Super Center has coconut milk in small town CO here. It's on the very bottom shelf where all the other "Asian" food is. Sometimes it almost looks like they don't have it - because the cans are shoved back or something. They don't have the good one that I like though (Native Forest). I am not sure if blending up the coconut cream stuff with water would be as good. I bought something like that and didn't have much luck turning it into actual 'coconut milk'. It was a dried type of thing - is this what you have PJ? In a box or something? Says 'coconut cream' ? In powdered form?

Let me know if you want me to dig up my invented chicken soup with curry/lemon/dijon (once you have your kitchen back that is). I think I have it saved in my PLAN.

Mustard, curry and lemon. OK you win creativity for sure, I would never have thought of combining those!!

I used to eat soft-fried corn taco shells with chicken flavored stovestop stuffing, cheddar cheese, and green taco sauce. My friends thought that was weird (though it was SO yummy). But I think mustard, curry and lemon is way more novel!

I don't have any problem finding coconut milk. My complaint is that it is expensive, plus it has various additives, and I'm trying to reduce how much living out of cans I do; some truly pure coconut seems better (by some obscure and probably totally stupid arbitrary measure).

I don't think that I can make coconut milk out of the coconut cream or butter -- it would not 'stick together' for emulsion, I think it naturally separates -- but it's possible that adding some of it and a little water (not much) and maybe some ghee to a simmer pan, could have an interestingly edible result anyway. Speaking of ghee I'm still trying to find some truly worth eating and not unaffordable. (No way am I making it myself!)

Today, I was looking over the living room mega-junk from the kitchen, in boxes and tubs and so on. It occurred to me that I need to get rid of some stuff in the kitchen too. C and I agree when it's time to put stuff back, that we will go through everything, and I will parse the hell out of it and get rid of as much stuff as possible.

And I need to USE more of what I have or I might as well get rid of it.

I came home from super walmart with more dishes from the set I want. That was when we didn't even have a place to put them anymore so we stuck them under the dining table for now LOL. Some square plates, rectangle plates, couple more of the tiny bowl, several tiny plates. There is more I need to add to the collection but I have enough basics now that I can go ahead and get rid of my existing dish set, which is thicker and takes up a lot of space (and has more pieces than I have so far from the other).

To show how big a change this is, I am going from a dish set that is totally white in 'rounded square' shape (called 'simply white' at walmart several years ago), to a dish set that is totally white in square/rectangle shape. Heh. Yes that's me, a real gypsy when it comes to dishes... I'm a minimalist freak about some things.

I started thinking about how much crap I could rid of if I only had something good to replace it. What I mean is, I often have many different variations of something because they serve different needs, but if I had one *good* thing -- like say, a quality implement in silicon -- then I could toss the 2-4+ versions of stuff I have now. Plus then I'd have something I could hang on a wire rack instead of having to have in counter holders or drawers. This goes for pans, for large utensils, etc. So instead of having a drawer full of variations on rubber spatulas, why not just have two nice silicon ones hanging? Rather than having a drawer AND a countertop holder stuffed with 'turners' and spoon variants -- half melted in places or old metal ones -- how about 1 of each major type in silicon hanging somewhere, and look at all that drawer space I just freed up!

I ended up going to amazon.com and spending way too much money (as if that's a surprise).

I got some novelty stuff that makes me feel happy inside for some reason.

* A 24-square slot silicone baking pan (makes stuff rather like a petit four in shape/size) that I actually want for making 1 Tbsp cocoa coconut bites, but that I just think would be adorable for making almost anything.

* A vertical ice cube tray. I'm not kidding. Reviews are one extreme or the other, so we'll see how it works. I have a horrible problem in my freezer with lack of space and noplace 'flat' for trays and this you put it together, put the lid on and toss it in. It holds up to two of its own trays full of ice inside the cup in the middle as well so I think it may turn out to be a great space deal, assuming I can use it well (users had varying experiences). I spent a lot on a bar blender at one point so I could crush ice darn it, but I never HAVE ice when I start thinking how nice it'd be. If this works, I'll have ice finally.

* A really kickass garlic press. I worship fresh garlic but don't have it so much because it's such a pain in the butt and messy to get to minced point. I've had many presses and they all sucked. The reviews on this one give me hope.

* A decent variable egg slicer and boiling timer. I know this wins me the official idiot award but I cannot seem to boil eggs without ending up with green on them or something, and yes I know all the rules about cooking them, it's just that none of my efforts work well except occasionally with no trackable reason to why. I want to be increasing my egg consumption especially 'in' things like cut up in CHICKEN CURRY SALAD is my current bright idea (thanks Sara and Lisa!!) so that's cool.

My favorite, though the cheapest:
1 - a Bento "egg shaper" of star and heart. It shapes hard boiled eggs.
2 - some little metal cutters for veggies, also a Bento accessory.
These were stuff I want to feed Ry of course, the japanese freak. She may be a white girl but her soul is loyal to the Emperor.



OK, as for food today. I didn't eat. I'd like to claim I forgot but actually I was hungry around 8am and regularly since. Fortunately I'm pretty disassociated from my body's state of hunger, so sitting around hungry for 18 hours is really not a problem for me, except that if I don't eat a LOT tomorrow morning, by tomorrow night I'll be eating carbs. It's now 1:38am the next day so I guess it's a sure bet that I am not eating yesterday. I was cranky. I didn't FEEL like eating a wrap again. I don't WANT to eat gluten and deli stuff. But I also didn't feel like mounting a search & rescue campaign to find enough cooking and eating stuff to make a burger patty or something, let alone how to clean up afterward (soap, rags, etc. are gone from the kitchen as well, it is really *empty*). Tomorrow I will find a pan, tongs and spatula, and make bacon & eggs.

I had two new ideas today.


1. Along with my "supplement frenzy" to try and 'nutrify' my cells en masse in large dose for a few months, I should be doing foot patch and extra water and other forms of "detox" during that time.

2. Bear with me here: could the interesting tendency of super obese people to be dissociated from their hunger to some degree, be related to the concept that "the cells are starving" when obesity is present (stuffing into fat rather than feeding the body with that energy etc.)? And maybe after some time the body just disconnects from the whole topic of hunger in order to 'deal'. Mind you I'm talking about stuff at a cellular level here -- things can hurt on the subconscious level.

We fried a turkey at a cookout on Sunday, and I had a ton of turkey leftover. I just threw together a turkey curry salad with celery, mayo, curry, salt pepper and a bit of mustard.
It's FABULOUS. Thank you so much for the suggestion. I wasn't looking forward to another day of just eating plain turkey.

It's melding in my fridge now, can't wait for lunch!

You can make your own coconut milk. I've seen instructions on the Internet. But it'd be a heck of a lot of work, IMHO.

As long as there's gravy, I'm happy to eat leftover turkey as-is, cold or hot.

The trouble, of course, is running out of gravy. So what I do is supplement with chicken stock or leftover stock from another turkey. I'm not much of a soup eater, so I use all my stock for sauces and gravies. I use a huge amount of stock too, because I thicken the gravy by reducing it instead of adding starch.

Mayonnaise is another great topping for leftover turkey. I've been experimenting with making mayonnaise from chicken fat. It's great but it's a lot of work. I bet turkey fat mayonnaise would be even better.

heh! but there's so little fat on turkey you'd have to cook 25 of them to get enough!

I'm a kitchen gadget fanatic too! Our kitchen has gone through a number of purges and renovations, and we've picked up some useful stuff along the way. My favorites:

Wooden stomper. That's my garlic press, my sauerkraut stomper, and sometimes my nut crusher and meat tenderizer. We now have an actual metal meat tenderizer, which is pretty much interchangeable with the stomper.

Oster blender. Almost but not quite as powerful as a Vitamix or a Blendtec. I've discovered that it fits any regular-mouth Mason jar, and a pint-size jar is perfect for grinding spices and coffee.

Mortar and pestle. After years without one, I finally have it. Except now I want the giant one they showed in "Julie & Julia."

Stick blender. I think I have an inferior model, but the whisk attachment is useful for making mayonnaise. I couldn't use it, though, until I found the right size and shape container (a tall conical metal measuring flask).

Whisks. Sometimes you just have to whip something into shape by hand. Usually it's a reduction sauce.

Silicone spatulas. Mainly for licking, so nothing goes to waste!

Thermometers. I don't use them often, but when I do, they're a lifesaver. I have an instant-read meat thermometer and a deep fry thermometer.

Grill brush. A recent acquisition.

On my wish list is a gravy separator.

Alton Brown always derides "uni-taskers", things that can be only used for one purpose. I do have one uni-tasker I do love, that'd be my very expensive garlic press. It pulverizes garlic so easily!

Well I'm thinking though, if it can press raw garlic, surely it can press boiled cauli. I wonder if that would 'rice' it or if it would just make much. I really love the cauli-fried 'rice' but it's such a pain in the ass to make I never do!

How about a low carb bar be que sauce and make a lettuce wrap. Another wrap with taco spices. Make a turkey salad with mayo, dill, nuts, celery, ect. have it on a bed of lettuce or in a lettuce wrap. Maybe make a sauce with Tabasco and butter and dip it in that, sort of like hot wings.