Recovery Soup

I had a migraine today and I've been sick with a cold for about a week or so, during FINALS, so I feel like healthy food is important right now! And everyone knows the healthiest food is soup.

I'm calling this a "Bird's Nest". It's a bowl of whole-wheat pasta and peas (boiled together), onto which I piled some shredded spinach, a smashed garlic clove, a little lemon peel, a chopped scallion, some black sesame seeds, black pepper, parsely, and three home-made (mom-made :>) meatballs. For the broth, all I did was boil some salted water and pour it over the flavored center of the bowl. The hot water quickly releases the scents and flavors of the spices and there you go, home made soup in as long as it takes to boil pasta!

The method of this dish reminds me of the kind of stew you make by putting a lot of chopped up stuff in a foil pouch when you're camping and just tossing it in the fire. In fact, if you have the resources to boil water when you're camping I bet this would be a pretty fun alternative. You could even use instant ramen (or any other super fast cooking or pre-cooked carb, minus the MSG pouch) so that you just pour your boiling water over the veg/meat/spices and noodle block all at once.

I'll probably be eating more like this in the next couple days because it's so simple and tailored to not having much in particular in the fridge. I think using thinner noodles--spaghetti or something like it--might work better though, since the big noodles here didn't seem to "sink" in a nice way. There's so many other things I could try in it... shredded carrot, frozen corn, beans, a dollop tomato sauce, maybe a fried egg, a drizzle of sesame oil... it could really suit any flavoring.

It's also light enough to suit a "medicinal" bowl of chocolate ice cream topped with dried fruit and salty cashews later... mmmmmmmmmmm :).