Your typical dried soup mix is easy, fast and admittedly delicious but how did it get that way? MSG in one form or another, a substance that makes your BRAIN SWELL UP in your head and push your ears out sideways and this toxic junk is what all commercial soup factories use. Brain swelling and gray cells pushing against inside of skull seem particularly delicious to you? No! So get your own soup mixes designed and made. (MANY recipes are suggested, below)
Here's the skivvy on MSG. It creates headaches, migraines, stomach upsets, diarrhea, irritable bowel syndrome, asthma, panic attacks, heart palpitations, mental confusion, mood swings, neurological disorder symptoms like Parkinson's, MS, ALS, Alzheimer's and even behavior disorders to name a few. MSG is not an allergin, it is a chemical which creates a powerful drug reaction. This MSG over-stimulation of the brain cells actually kills the brain cells. Hey the sixties, if nothing else, proved that stimulating cells created the death of cells. Psychedelics could be recreational, but this isn't Kansas any more Toto.
SO WE WANT LEAN, MEAN, CLEAN SOUP and we want it fast and a lot of it and free. Or nearly free. Yep, we want to nutrify our brains and be vitaminized, smart, frugalize and survive the coming BIG DEPRESSION! You need to be in one piece, and dried soup or canned, with all that MSG, tasty though it is on the tongue, isn't the way!* (see more on MSG at end.) SO MAKE YOUR OWN SOUPs from scratch. Bottom line, WE HAVE to scorn envelopes, cans and frozen bricks and get our own soup mix going.
DRY STUFF WE NEED TO KEEP AROUND THE HOUSE FOR SOUPMAKING: . For all these years after the L.A. riots when we had curfews, no way to wait in a line with l00 people at the supermarket, I've saved staple goods, especially BUCKWHEAT SOBA NOODLES, Broccoli, ginger slices, raw, onion, sesame oil and fish fillets for my oriental fish soup.
I keep beans and split peas for when I get ham bones! And I keep pumpkin around in autumn with pork sausage for thicker, cold weather soups.
Stash your soba in the freezer, in a bag, keep it dry. Fish fillets are in there, too. Keep lentils, pulse, beans, spices in rodent proof areas of shelves, in bags, in jars, sealed containers or in the freezer. These prove useful either when one runs out of food late at night and is hungry or during the first bombs of World War III, --whichever comes first.
When there's a sudden need for food, beans around you can make a filling, hearty meat, fish or vegetable soup. If you have more time, soak the dried pulse overnight til it comes alive, rinse, toss the water, then simmer with stuff from the yard, swiss chard, potatoes, carrots, celery, other vegies, a few chiles (always take seed for next Spring's planting), onions, garlic, old frozen ham bones. You get a great "PULL A RABBIT OUT OF A HAT" soup every time. Cupboards can be bare and everybody eats!
MEXICANS save their old corn tortillas, the ones that dry up like flying saucers. Fry lightly in oil into which you sauteed onion, garlic a little pepper, or chile pepper or bell pepper; pour over some fresh tomato, some broth and hominey. Sopa de Tortilla. THey melt cheese on top. Beats all!
You want a delicious soup, let's put ingredients into the pot that we can't get with dry soup! Real fresh vegies, frozen basil leaves, cilantro, garlic, chile sesame oil, or plain sesame oil, (from Asian supermarket,) oil-jar preserved basil. Add MISO which is soup mix in CHINA and JAPAN which is a fermented soy paste that has a meaty taste, seaweed, (also from Asian supermarket,) dried mushrooms, chile slices, and nutritious TOFU which keeps our skin like a 20 year old when we're fifty and sixty. And a slash of lime or lemon to make it like china town sour soup. Add dashi which is bonito flakes, (VERY HARD TO FIND WITHOUT MSG so make your own flavor base, SOUP GURU tells you how....) and read up on all the other thing JAPANESE CUISINE uses in soup, meat or vegie dishes. Make a list of what appeals to you, then hit the ASIAN GROCERY STORE FOR REAL BARGAINS. CHILE SESAME oil, or toasted sesame oil, or just sesame oil must be purchased for salad dressings, stews and soups! And sesame seeds that you will toast and grind a few grains of salt into ...and store in a jar as seasoning salt.
MISO soup mix purchased at the healthfood store is costly. $3.79 for four little thin envelopes. Nearly a buck each bowl of soup. NAHHHHHH!. TOO MUCH! At An Asian grocery store, you'll find really good prices on DASHI, little crocks of miso paste, and the costly dried MISO SOUP, sea weed, brown rice, and all kinds of delicious noodles to make your soups exquisite including buckwheat noodles, (SOBA) also dried black shitake mushrooms and sesame oil and toasted sesame seed but I go to a regular supermarket and buy an envelope for 59c, toast it myself, keep in a little box on stove.
WE WANT TO FRUGALIZE when we cook. I buy a lot of cheese at once. The cheap stuff, KROGER JAC, $3.50 for an lb. Freeze the whole thing. Day I plan some soup with cheese melted on top, I take it out, thaw it a little slice of what I need and refreeze as I've seen cheese grow green fur!
I buy SOBA NOODLES on sale, 3 lbs at a time ($4.99,) as it's ten times cheaper than buying a little one day serving of SOBA!.. I buy FISH from the oriental supermarket, cuz nobody's cheaper. Dover Sole, 89c lb, POLLOCK frozen fillets, 3 lb bags .99c an lb! UNBELIEEABLE. I keep it in the freezer. BUYING sale items in bulk works. Check the Frugal Roo which is my frugal website. Be sure to find your local KOREAN, CHINESE, Thai or Japanese grocery and see what's out there MISO WISE! Once you have some goodies in your basket, here's the RECIPE:
SOBA
AND FISH ORIENTAL SOUP - I do not fry the fish filet in oil though
that would be acceptable. I simmer the fish fillet with broccoli, a fragment
of chile jalapeno, a few dried mushrooms or fresh, a few oz of soba noodles,
onion, carrot slices or grated shreds, slices of fresh ginger. When done,
add them together, add sesame oil, soy sauce, lime juice, toasted sesame
seeds, shreds of green onion. You can also add tofu pieces at the end.
HAMS AND YAMS, a STURDY PEASANT SOUP WHICH REJUVENATES US! Slow cook in crockpot, a melange of vegies, water and ham bones. Use some antioxidant rich stuff, broccoli, greens, carrots, yams. Kombu and other seaweed, dried mushrooms. Simmer them in your water.
# Greens, yam slices, fry lightly in oil first # Carrots really do help you to see in the dark. They contain beta-carotene, which is converted to vitamin A in the body (also called retinol because of its effect on the retina) and is vital for eye function. Add some slices of onion. In three or four minutes, it's ready. Add:
# Tofu. A Pound seems like a lot to buy but I change water daily and take a slie a day. Or you can freeze half of your tofu, fresh out of the box in little one inch strips, but marinate with a mix of lemon, sesame oil and soy sauce. Wrap in plastic wrap before they go in freezer. Drop one in soup while it simmers to warm it. Frozen tofu is a bit chewier than the unfrozen version, but that has its charms. I might marinate them in soy sauce, chile sesame oil and lemon or lime, bag them in plastic, freeze them that way. Give them a head start toward being tasty.
#Meat or Fish pieces, leftovers or mince up something. DASHI which is bonito flakes. HAM BONE is a major find! I can't wait til Nick Cage does "HAMBONE, NATIONAL TREASURE." A recession film.
# Noodles. Have a 3 lb box of buckwheat noodles on hand as a staple. (Whole grain and very low glycemic index, so it's not going to give you diabetes.) Simmer them up separately from your cup of miso soup and your vegies. Drain the noodles when they are full cooked add to the soup or you get starchy soup water! (As a girl, I SAW THE JAP FILM "TAMPOPO" the ultimate ramen flick! Google it.
#MAGIC FLAVOR: a toothpick worth of chile pepper, seaweed flakes, dried shitake mushrooms or real fresh 'shrooms. Dried chiles, Chile Sesame oil. LIke four drops. LIME JUICE to freshen the final product! Lightly fry shrooms w. fat/garlic/onion/chile to load them w. flavor, throw whole pan into soup.
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WOW. That kinda soup is gonna make you forget
Campbells' CHICKEN AND NOODLE! It's gonna make you say sayonara
to BEAN soup and SPLIT PEA soup which (admit it!) gives you embarassing
levels of GAS! Well, I won't banish them as they are the primo RECESSION
ERA SOUPS. When you're starving and there is only a ham bone stuck
in the back of the freezer and you can't leave the house as it's midnight
and snowing or they ethnics are rioting and supermarkets close at sunset
cuz it's dangerous to be out on the streets or drive to a market, --then
you can throw together a super soup with dried peas or beans. However,
this ORIENTAL bonito fish broth is what soup was always supposed to be,
hot, spicy, rejuvenating, proteinacious, hearty.....taking a chunk of hunger
out of your day! And not using calories to do it!
Commercial DRIED SOUPS of any sort are COSTLY. Whole Foods has MISO soups for a dollar each, each mug a buck? nah. Try Japanese, Korean or Chinese grocery stores. Barrio stores. You may get a better deal.
Next, visit JAPAN TOWN, or KOREA TOWN or CHINA TOWN and order their Miso soup which is a light but sturdy broth containing this wonderful, tasty FERMENTED SOY PASTE. It is usually served at breakfast in Japan and sometimes includes tofu, mushrooms, seaweed, or green onions or meat.
For EVERYTHING YOU EVER WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT MISO:
http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/miso
*HOW TOXIC IS MSG?? Years ago there was an article in Science News (don't have the issue number, but I am searching for it) which said that there was enough MSG in a packet of a well known brand of dried soup mix to kill a two year old child! Maybe all that autism is not Mercury in Vaccines, it's MSG in all adult SAVORY foods known to the marketplace! A rose by any other name might be as toxic!
Food Additives That ALWAYS Contain MSG
Monosodium Glutamate [MSG]
Hydrolyzed Vegetable Protein [HVP]
Hydrolyzed Protein; Hydrolyzed Plant Protein
Plant Protein Extract
Sodium Caseinate
Calcium Caseinate
Yeast Extract
Textured Protein (Including TVP)
Autolyzed Yeast
Hydrolyzed Oat Flour
Corn Oil
Food Additives That FREQUENTLY Contain MSG
Malt Extract
Malt Flavoring
Bouillon
Broth
Stock
Flavoring
Natural Flavors/Flavoring
Natural Beef or Chicken Flavoring
Seasoning
Spices
Food Additives That MAY Contain MSG Or Excitotoxins
Carrageenan
Enzymes
Soy Protein Concentrate
Soy Protein Isolate
Whey Protein Concentrate
Also: Protease Enzymes of various sources can release
excitotoxin amino acids from food proteins.
SO, check the envelope of your dried soup mix for the many names of MSG. Another toxin in commercial mixes is the aluminum lining inside the bag even if it has a plastic coating! Lab tests have shown aluminum lined containers coated with plastic is no barrier from preventing the debilitating poisons in PACKAGING from leaching into our food. It gets in toothpaste from the aluminum seal at top, and all foods stored in it especially acidic tomato sauced food or lemon, which 'pull' aluminum. As I dress fresh caught fish with lemon before freezing, I don't use foil! I use plastic bags.
DASHI, BONITO FISH FLAVOR
http://www.mingspantry.com/misbrotwitta.html
has
best recipe, pictures, etc
Soup has konbu seaweed, that never is boiled, and l cup bonito flakes
Better than dashi instant stuff w. MSG in Asian markets.
http://www.pacificeastwest.com/kasobats.html
NOW I'm working on HOW TO MAKE YOUR OWN BONITO FLAKES.
We can catch that fish here in LA. I'll bet you can buy that fish where
YOU are.
WHY dry it? Take a fillet, simmer it, there ya go! Asian markets have
big
bags of frozen pollock fillets, $1.50 a lb usuall 3 lbs in the pckg.
I get it
though it's a very delicate flavored fish, not like bonito.
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