January 28, 2013 Lunch - Miso Pho Noodle Soup; Dinner - Pizza

January 28, 2013 Lunch – Miso Pho Noodle Soup; Dinner – Pizza

I did not eat breakfast so at 11:00 I made a noodle soup with instant dashi, seshe seaweed, tofu, AkiMiso, Pho flavoring, two beef meatballs, six shrimps, 1 Tbsp. yellow onion, 1 Green onion, two shitake mushrooms sliced thinly, two slices of Lebanon bologna cut into strips, a large handful of spinach and rice wheat and buckwheat noodles.   Amazingly light and yet flavorful and full of noodles.  Quite different from the thin miso soup on finds in Japanese restaurants, more of a noodle shop kind of experience.

I guess David Chang is beginning to influence me from afar.  I am tired of thin watery flavorless soup.

Suzette arrived around 3:30 p.m. but we continued working until after 4:00.  At around 4:15 we drove to the Stihl repair shop and then to Costco where we bought sugar snap peas, coffee, a few other necessary household items, some chocolate covered almonds, bottle of Albarino, and a pizza.  We decided to not cook, but to prepare pizza and drink chianti for dinner.  There are three types of ready to bake pizzas at Costo, pepperoni, pepperoni and sausage, and five cheeses (all are $8.99 each).  We selected the five cheeses one because Suzette said she liked to garnish the pizza with her own favorite toppings.  I told her about how delicious the Lebanon Bologna (sent to us by her parents who live in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania for Christmas) was in the soup and she said she definitely wanted to use that and some mushrooms.  I said, “We have fresh Portabellas.” I also suggested onions but Suzette was not enthusiastic about onions.  

When we got home around 5:40 I sliced bologna, mushrooms and I told Suzette that we had large Mexican green onions (the Mexican green onions that are sold at Pro’s Ranch market are somewhere between a large green onion and a small onion.  They are about 18 inches long with a bulb at the bottom that is over 1 inch wide in diameter.  Grilled green onions are ubiquitous at taco stands in Western Mexico), which she gladly agreed to add.  After I had garnished the pizza and Suzette had pre-heated the oven to 400˚, in went the pizza.  After twelve to fifteen minutes the pizza was ready, so I went to the basement for a bottle of chianti (Trader Joe’s $5.99).  We got the pizza paddle and removed the pizza from the oven and got the pizza slicing wheel and cut the colorful pizza into eight large slices.  Spread with circles of from green to white onion, irregularly shaped thin slices of dark crimson Lebanon Bologna (that has a slightly sweet flavor and tastes and has the consistency of hard salami but with less fat) and triangular wedges of light brown portabella mushrooms on its white cheese background, the pizza resembled an abstract painting.  

Bon Appétit