Grandiose Ideas

Momo and I are still not feeling well today. We spent most of the morning sitting on the couch relaxing.



Around 2 o'clock this afternoon Momo wanted to go rent a movie so we ventured out for the first and only time today. On our way home from Blockbuster I decided to stop by Vons to get some ingedients for Chicken Noodle Soup.

Due to all the congestion and ickyness, both of us have rather suppressed appetites, but soup sounded good.

As we walked through the produce section of the store, Momo caught sight of some lovely bok choy, and she insisted that we should have Bok Choy Soup instead of Chicken Noodle.

I agreed with Momo. My Bok Choy Soup is pretty yummy...so we got what we needed and headed home.

As I was preparing to cook, I had the grandiose idea of blogging the recipe and my attempt at cooking it.

Honestly, I am no cook...I experiement with stuff based on what I think tastes good and I often just make things up...so I have no idea what made me think I could "food blog". Oh well, let's blame it on the illness...

(Tastes better than it looks) Bok Choy Soup:

Several months ago, my neighbor gave me a recipe for Egg Drop Soup. I have made it several times since then, each time changing things depending on my mood (or more accurately, I make things up because I can't remember the darn recipe). Anyhow, overtime, the soup has been renamed in my house and this is simply a retelling of what I did today...

What I used:
1 large bunch of Bok Choy (you can also use 4-5 bunches of the baby variety)
2 large boneless chicken breasts
2 eggs
2 32oz boxes of low sodium chicken broth
2 cups of water
And the seasonings (which I'll tell you more about later)

The first thing I like to do when making this soup, is boil the chicken in a mixture of the chicken broth and water.

While the chicken is boiling, I like to take the bok chok apart and give each stalk a thorough washing. Bok choy tends to be pretty dirty, so I always do this before cutting. What I end up with looks like this:

Then I cut the ends off the stalks and chop the bok choy into "slivers". After chopping, I like to rinse the bok choy one more time, just to be sure... I'm kinda paranoid that way...


Once the chicken has boiled, I remove it from the "soup" and set it aside to cool. Then I add the Bok Choy to the soup to cook.
As soon as I add the bok choy, I add some soy sauce to the pot. This time I think I used about a 1/4 of a cup.
It's also about this time that I add a few drops of the Sesame Chili Oil (it adds a great smell and some nice flavor, but be careful because it can be HOT!)

Once I add the soy sauce, chili oil and some salt and pepper, I let the bok choy boil for about 10 minutes then I turn the heat down, cover and simmer for about another 5 - 10 mintues. While the bok choy is cooking, I shred the chicken into very small pieces.
When the time is right (i.e. the bok choy is tender) I add the chicken back into the pot and turn the heat back up, one last time. As I wait for the soup to come to a near boil, I crack two eggs and scramble them. Once the water is nearly boiling, I slowly pour the eggs into the soup, swiflty scrambling them with the end of a long cooking chopstick.

Now...it was at this point that I kinda messed up today. I actually forgot to turn the heat back up so when I added my eggs, they didn't form the pretty white stringy egggy things, instead my soup got a little cloudy with tiny little egg bits, but it still tasted good.

After adding a little more salt and pepper, and letting the soup sit (covered) for about 5 minutes, it was ready to eat...I must say that it was really good, just what we both needed!


Oh, and by the way...I don't think I like recipe blogging very much...it's really time consuming and, well, I found that there were so many little side stories I wanted to tell but the post was getting to long...Tomorrow, I will be back to my normal Momo and Mango Hyjinx blogging...I promise!

I would love to hear what you think though...