Feisty Bento #386: Magic Soup

My entire weekend in three pictures:

studying while the furbaby tried to distract me...

a very early birthday present from the bestest.boyfriend.EVER (not just for this alone, but this definitely goes in the "Reasons" column!)...

and our (our being used to indicate BF & I) last game at Citi Field for the '09 season.  The very horrible '09 season.  But we won, 6-2 (grumble should have been 6-0 but Stokes grrr). 

Yes, I studied on Friday night and almost all day Saturday before allowing the boyfriend to come over with part 1 of my birthday present in tow.  (My birthday, by the way, isn't until late October.)  Then we played Rock Band, ate dinner, played Rock Band some more, and I discovered that I don't know the names of many, many Beatles songs... and out of the 5-6 chapters we've completed, only one song had I ever truly never heard.  (I would see the name of a song and say, "I've never heard this song before," and then it would start and I'd say, "Oh, okay, I know this song," and do fine.  But that one song I never heard really threw me and I scored wicked low... haha!) 

Sunday was the last game to which we held tickets, and I'm glad we won.  It was a nice way to close out my season.

But let's talk food.  So when I say I "studied" on Friday & Saturday, well, my creativity kicks into full gear when I'm supposed to be studying... and I finally discovered how to motivate myself into cleaning the kitchen. 

Find something else I want to do even less.  So I cleaned and washed dishes instead of studying because I was just sick and tired of reading about the industrial revolution already (which, by the way, apparently in Europe / in college history, didn't start the same way it did in America / in elementary & high school history; that cotton gin thing and all those inventors really didn't mean squat in the larger sense of the time period, who'd have thunk?!). 

And I cooked.  I whipped up an apple dessert thing because I had two apples on my table that were going soft and I'm tired of wasting food.  I made stock (which I still need to strain and reduce a bit more... from a 12 quart pot!).  I roasted bone marrow.  I roasted zucchini.  I made soup.  Ooh, did I make soup. 

Saturday, after cleaning, studying, going a bit stir-crazy, I discovered my nose running like it was Forrest Gump and I couldn't stop sneezing.  It wasn't "there's too much dust from cleaning" sneezing, it was sneezing "I'm about to be full blown sick" so I did what any normal girl does when she's about to get sick. 

I made soup. 

You know that soup I've been making all summer?  I did that, with extra garlic, extra red pepper flakes, and I drank it, sweating a little from how hot I'd made it - both temperature and spiciness - and sweated out the toxins.  I went to sleep and woke up refreshed and not even close to being sick anymore.  (I changed up the ingredients a little, so I'll be posting a new recipe eventually... titling it "Magic Soup" or "Healing Soup" or... any suggestions?) 

I took some of the soup in my thermal jar, in the side cup is roasted zucchini salad (not the ultimate one! just a new random thrown together concoction), and in the star baking cup is apple... betty... sort of.  I haven't decided on a name for it yet, and I really need to tweak it slightly (but now I need more apples!) and then you'll have the super simple method for that. 

I'm kind of pissed about the thermal jar though.  I got to work and opened up my bag and it was LEAKING everywhere.  Isn't this supposed to be watertight???  I even removed a bit more of the soup because I tend to overfill this container, which is okay when it's rice, but this is soup so I emptied it a bit.  BOO.  Why do jars keep leaking on me???  Zojirushi, wtf?!  It got ALL OVER my stuff and ALL OVER my bag!  Not cool.

In any case, I'm still looking forward to lunch, although I'm wondering a bit just how MUCH soup was lost (seriously it was pooled in the bottom of my lunchbag)... will I need something else to eat?  Hmmm...

Think outside the lunchbox!!! let's hope not 'get soup outside the lunchbox' though!