Not a Foodie / Split Pea Soup with Sausage and Apples

Nothing like soup and sausage on a cool Fall day! 

Remember that split pea soup I made? Well, it turned out delicious!

We ended up serving it for dinner with mild italian sausage sautéed with apples and onions.  The apples came out just crisp enough to add a nice crunch to the dish and the sausage flavor blended so well with the soup that I ended up mixing everything together in the bowl!

Not a Foodie / Split Pea Soup

When I was a kid, the words "split pea soup" immediately made me think, "gruel." Here in the South, every version I encountered was a thick mush of bland peas with the merest hint of ham.  The soup looked gross and tasted even worse. That is, until I developed my own version.

Not an Astronomer / Partial Solar Eclipse October 23, 2014

At 5:45 PM Eastern Time, we here in North America should be able to get an excellent view of a partial solar eclipse tomorrow.

A solar eclipse occurs when the New Moon passes directly over the line of sight between the Earth and the Sun, partially or completely blocking our view of the Sun for a brief period of time. In a partial eclipse, like we will see tomorrow, the moon will create a shadow that blocks out all but a crescent of the Sun.

 Partial Solar Eclipse in London, England, 1870

Due to the angle of the Moon's orbit in relation to the Earth's orbit around the Sun, the moon normally passes just above or below our line of sight to the Sun in it's monthly circuit around our home, making a solar eclipse a rare enough event to be observed and celebrated. So, tomorrow, make yourself a pinhole viewer* and head outside just before dinnertime to watch this exciting event!

Side-Note on Significance: Solar eclipses have the same energies as any New Moon, but enhanced. In addition to the normal excellent energy for beginning new endeavors that the New Moon brings us each month, the partial eclipse of the Sun tomorrow brings with it strong energies for change and new directions. 

* NEVER observe the Sun directly unless you know what you're doing, especially if you are young, old, light sensitive, or have light-colored eyes. If you enjoy observing Sun-related sky events, you might consider purchasing eclipse glasses or a special viewer to have on hand.

Not a Foodie / Save it All and Make Stock

This post is an edited re-blog of something I wrote back in 2011.  The original post can be found on my personal blog, Nerd & Nurturer.

I love fresh vegetables! Unless you have your own garden, though, fresh isn't always cheap nowadays.  Personally, I like to visit our local Korean grocery store and plan meals around the veggies they have on sale.  In the past, I would prepare my vegetables in the modern manner of chopping off the ends and peeling straight into the trash can.  One night, though, I was preparing a particularly veggie-heavy meal and was shocked to see how much food I had wasted by throwing the scraps in the trash.  I thought about composting but I don't have a garden so compost was not going to result in more food on my table.  Since it was winter and I was on a soup-making kick, I thought, "Hey, why not save all these vitamins and minerals and put them in some soup?"

And so began the filling of my freezer with funny things:

Not a Foodie / Curry Basil Cream Sauce

This month, I'm attempting a new experiment: shopping for my entire month at once and freezing dishes made with highly perishable items for use later. One advantage to this is that I can go (kinda) hog-wild at the Farmer's Market, which is far enough of a drive for me that it's hard to go more than once a month.

For this trip, I tried to stick with seasonal veggies both because they last longer and because I was craving Fall produce. Two exceptions to this were my purchases of a boatload of delicious looking tomatoes and an especially fragrant bunch of fresh basil. Now, you might think this would result in your classic tomato-basil soup but that would be so boooring!  Bedides, with my daughter's love of a fresh tomato, I have a feeling we won't have a problem using the tomatoes before they go bad.

The basil, though...my aromatic impulse purchase...what to do with it? I considered making pesto - I do love a good pesto - until I ran across an old recipe I cut out from a magazine years ago and never had gotten around to trying: Basil Cream Sauce.

Not a Foodie / Ramen with Mushrooms and Broccoli

Ramen Noodles. College staple. Poor man's mana.

One of the things I like best about a Ramen dinner, besides its frugality and speed, is the ability to dress it up so it's never the same meal twice.