Buckwheat Miso Soup

This makes you look like an expert chef and there is nothing to it. It took maybe 40 minutes of lazy cooking.


A buckwheat miso soup. Absolutely scrumptious.


We diced up half a big onion and


sautéed it in a little sesame oil together with a grated knob of fresh ginger and


3 tablespoons of miso (a store bought concentrated mixture).


We minced 2 cloves of garlic and sliced up a handful of shiitake mushrooms.


We added them to the onion for a few minutes. And then followed them up with a quart of water and one quart of vegetable broth. We turned up the heat, brought it to a boil, and




added 5 eggs. (When you pierce a small hole on the round side of an egg, where the air bubble is, it i less likely to crack.)


We boiled them in the simmering soup for exactly 7 minutes so that they were fully cooked with a soft yolk, slightly on the runny side.

When they came out we dumped the eggs in an ice bath for a minute, took the shells off, and halved them lengthwise.

We added one half cup of uncooked buckwheat groats and one sliced carrot to the soup and continued to simmer the soup until the buckwheat was soft. (If you want to save 10 minutes on cooking time you can do this before adding the eggs, but it gets quite messy when you retrieve them.)

In the meantime we sliced up 3 leaves of bok choy and 2 green onions. We added them to the simmering soup for 5 minutes. Then we stirred in 2 tablespoons of rice vinegar and a little salt and pepper.

That was it. Each bowl of soup we served received two egg halves. An absolute winner. A soup with an umami punch.

Chicken Fried Rice

Okay. If you need to feed the troops. And it's Thursday night and you just don't care anymore, you do this. Chicken Fried Rice. Since we have one or two self-proclaimed vegetarians banging their forks on the table, we keep the chicken separate. But if you like to get all the good gristle in there, keep it together and use one frying pan.

Here is last Thursday's version.

First we got 1 cup of rice cooking, fried up a few boneless chicken thighs in a little bit of olive oil and with a good bit of salt and pepper, and

sliced and chopped up 2 carrots and half a big onion.

Next we sautéed the carrots for a good six minutes or so.

When the chicken was done and nice and crispy on the outside we pulled it apart with two forks.

We added the onions to the carrots for a few minutes and

then 1 drained can of corn and 2 handfuls of frozen peas.

Lastly came the fun part. We added the rice and placed 3 eggs in the center.

We stirred the eggs into all the goodness until it was all over, clinging to every last spec of rice and veggie. We added a little salt, pepper, oregano, and soy sauce to round it all up.

Voila! The chicken people added chicken to their delight. And we all dug in. Let's just say there were no leftovers.

Slow Cooker - Spinach, Parmesan, and Bean Soup

We forgot to take a picture or the end result. But it doesn't matter. Essentially the bean soup is an excuse to shovel in an obscene load of fresh baby spinach and Parmesan cheese.

First we sautéed half a big chopped onion for a few minutes.  Then we added a couple of garlic cloves and continued to sauté them for another 30 seconds or so.

In the meantime, we chopped up two handfuls of cherry tomatoes (alternatively a big can of chopped tomatoes will do the trick).

We added the tomatoes, 3 cans of cannellini beans, the onions and garlic,

1 quart of vegetable broth, a can worth of water, and a little salt and pepper to the slow cooker and set it on 4 hours high (or 8 hours low).

Then we harvested our herb garden for a couple handfuls of fresh herbs (in our case basil, thyme, and oregano) and added them to the soup.

We washed a good 5 handfuls of fresh baby spinach and looked for the Parmesan. When we were ready to eat, we filled our bowls with soup, loaded them up with spinach to each of our delight, sprinkled the whole goodness with cheese, and dug in. YUM!

Slow Cooker - Veggie Chili

Here is another slow cooker chili recipe that worked for us. All veggie. All easy. All yum!

All we had to do was to throw the following into the pot, turn it on low and wait 8 hours: 1 onion, 3 cloves of garlic, 2 stalks of celery, 2 bell peppers, 1 small can of diced tomatoes, the same can worth of water, 1 quart of vegetable broth, 1 cup of lentils, 1 cup of quinoa, 1 can of pinto beans, cumin, oregano, salt, and pepper.

To get all fancy we offered some Tabasco sauce and cheeses to serve. (This is about as easy at it gets, right?!)

Slow Cooker - Saucy Meatballs

As our days become decidedly more messy we are pushed to try out more slow cooker meals. This one comes courtesy of Emily Green and her fun blog Emily Bites. Though it requires cooking a fresh pot of pasta as you come home it still made life easier. She also suggests serving the meatballs and marinara sauce on buns.

We couldn't get around tweaking this a little to fit our pantry. First we shredded dried bread into 2 handfuls of bread crumbs. We added it into a bowl with 1 lb of ground beef, 2 eggs, a handful of freshly shredded Parmesan, a quarter cup of milk, a bit of garlic powder, dried oregano, dried basil, salt, and pepper. We mixed it all up with our hands, adding a few breadcrumbs when it felt too mushy, and formed about 16 meatballs.

We fried them up on the outside only and tossed them into the slow cooker.

For the sauce we diced up half a big onion, 2 cloves of garlic, and a handful of fresh leaves of basil.

Check out the basil plant by-the-by. It has grown like crazy within 6 weeks or so.

In the same pan loosening the fried beef bits we melted the onions for a few minutes in olive oil, added the garlic for another, and then 1 big can of crushed tomatoes, 1 small can of tomato sauce, a little tomato paste, the basil, salt, and 1 bay leaf. All that got transferred right away into the slow cooker.

We let it simmer on low for 8 hours.

It was so scrumptious that we forgot to take a picture of the final result. It was an excellent end-of-the-week-just-feed-me dish. Thank you Emily!

Grandma's Beef Stew

When snow came down on a perfectly fine spring day in North Carolina's Piedmont we decided to test out an all American old-fashioned beef stew.

We gave the whole affair 2 1/2 hours with plenty of time to skip out. First we dusted 1 1/2 lb. of chopped up stew meat in a quarter cup of flour and a good bit of pepper.

Then we browned it with olive oil in our casserole pot in 2 batches.

We took out the meat and added about 1 cup of red wine and roughly 2 tablespoons of red wine vinegar. Over medium heat we loosened all the crunchy beef bits and then added 2 bay leaves, 1 quart of beef broth, and the meat, brought the whole shebang to a boil and let it simmer, covered, for 1 1/2 hours.

Then we pealed and chopped 1 medium onion, 5 carrots, and 3 potatoes. They were added to the stew for another 30 minutes. At the end we measured the consistency of the broth and took off the lid for a while. We also nibbled on the potatoes to call for dinner when they were just right.

A little salt and pepper - Voila! Mama and Papa got a finish off the left over wine as we dug in. It was just right. Warming our bones and leaving us without a care in the world. Of course the snow was all melted and gone by the time we were done.

Slow Cooker - Split Pea Soup

"If you say one more time - ohh, it tastes just like it would back in Germany - we'll skip right to the ice cream!!"

But for real for real; this thing was off the shizzle. We put real ham hocks into it. For taste. Beat that!

Okay. But first we chopped up a whole bunch of stuff: 4 carrots (they don't have to be that colorful), half a red pepper, 2 sticks of celery, 1 whole big onion, 4 cloves of garlic, 2 bay leaves, and about 1 tablespoon of fresh thyme leaves. All that and 2 ham hocks (1 is plenty) we placed into a slow cooker. 

We added 1 pound of split peas, salt, and pepper. We covered it with 2 quarts of vegetable broth and turned the slow cooker on low for 8+ hours.

Before we left for bigger and better things we chopped up a few beef franks and tossed them into a scolding hot cast iron pan for a short while. (If we can get our hands on good quality Vienna sausages, we'll use those.) Discarding the greasy juices we popped them into the fridge to add them later upon our return.

Check it out! Everybody dug in and fought for the best pieces. Perfect fall fodder for the masses.

We did remove the hog's ham hocks prior to eating. We might try it sometime with big chunks of bacon instead. Just to see how it might turn out.

Slow Cooker - Sloppy Joes

All right. Here is another Slow Cooker recipe. One that can be cooking for eight hours and be put on the table in seconds - Sloppy Joes.

It was quite simple and yes - sloppy. We browned 2 pounds of happy cow beef, placed it in the slow cooker and added a whole bunch of stuff. Namely: half a chopped onion, 1 chopped green pepper, 2 tablespoons mustard, 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce, 1 can tomato sauce, half of that can worth of water, roughly one half cup of ketchup, a quarter cup of brown sugar, 2 tablespoons of apple cider vinegar, a little salt and pepper, and 1/8 cup of flour.

We turned the bad boy to low, turned to more pressing matters for about 8 to 9 hours and ate. 

To do so we got a bag of hamburger buns. The girls loved it!

Chicken Stew

This must be the lazy cook's chicken stew. An easy 45 minutes of simmering. See for yourself:

We chopped up 1 large onion, 3 cloves of garlic, 2 celery stalks, 3 carrots, and  2 bell peppers.

All that we cooked in a bit of olive oil for about 5 minutes.

In the meantime we peeled and cut up 1.5 pounds of yellow potatoes and then added them to the veggies.

Then we added 2 quarts of chicken broth and a little salt, brought it to a boil and let it simmer for 15 minutes.

We cut up 1.5lb of assorted chicken parts and 1 zucchini and added them along with

1 tablespoon of Dijon mustard, a little dried basil, dried sage, and dried thyme leaves. We brought it back to boil again and let it simmer for another 15 minutes.

At the end we removed a handful of potatoes, smashed them up with a fork, and added them back to thicken the soup. A little salt and pepper to taste.

Voila.