As we grow older, and hopefully wiser, we (also hopefully) achieve better clarity about how we want to live our lives. In the modern cities, we are led to live the dreams of someone else’s, including our parents, our mentors, and a bunch of people who are only passing through.
As early as we live independently, and think independently, we begin to sieve through the routines that we had adopted since we were children.
For me, I might still be holding on to some routines that my older sister who shared a room with me, would throw a disgruntled look over.
Now, being married has its merits. I get to be the matriarch of traditions, in our private (fine, not that private, since I blog, tweet, and facebook about our day-to-day small talks) world, that is. I don’t care to alter anyone’s tradition.
Aside from a bunch of new and abandoned traditions since we got married, the new tradition is the Soup Day, which is now maintained on Wednesdays and Saturdays.
Today, I prepared some pasta to add to the soup.
Am I not lucky, the husband actually loves soup, a lot! I can’t really cook – at least not at risking to burn the apartment down – I sure can eat though. I fare quite well with the soup – and you can’t really go so wrong with soup – and once again, I am so thankful for internet. I scoured through the internet and found some recipes for vegetable soups (mainly for my post-Master Cleanse Program). I never knew different ways to cook soup, I would dump everything in the water and drizzle some olive oil on it. That didn’t taste bad, but the new way to cook the soup notches up the level of tastiness by a lot.
So, for the pasta, I cooked the pasta in boiling water for around 11 minutes, as instructed at the back of the package. (of course, I always follow instruction!) Drain the pasta and rinse them in cold water. This is important, because if you don’t do that, the pasta will still continue to ‘cook’ in the heat, by rinsing them with cold water, it contracts quickly and making it more ‘springy’. Ok, the rinsing and contracting part is really just my logical mind speaking, I haven’t researched on that. It works anyway.
I left the pasta in a draining bowl to rid of excess water. Excess water in contact with the pasta is likely to result in soggy parts.
This method is great if you are cooking a large pot – like I do – of soup.
Add the amount of pasta you want to a serving bowl, add hot soup on it, mix well and add pepper to taste. This way, you get springy great tasting pasta every time.
If you are interested in the step-by-step recipe of the vegetable soup, it’s blogged on my other blog – The Quirky Me.
Apart from the original recipe, I add/replace the ingredients here and there:
Califlower
Hairy Gourd
Sweet corn (you may use canned corn, I’d prefer the corn on cob and I slice the corn kernels down)
Asparagus
The good thing about using more different vegetables in your soup is that each spoonful of soup you drink, it gives quite an interestingly varied taste. With pasta added, you have a nice high fibre and low fat meal.
