soup!

Ok, I made this soup a few weeks ago and people here were asking for the recipe, so I thought I'd put it up.

Allison’s Black Bean Soup
Disclaimer: There are many variations on Black Bean Soup. It’s a highly versatile recipe, so add or remove whatever vegetables you want from the list. Also, I didn’t measure anything, so all “measurements” here are really guesses as to how much I used. I probably added more than is listed here, as I was waiting for things to cook and got a bit bored. Use your own discretion and suit this recipe to your own taste.
Cooking time: maybe an hour Serving size: about five

You might want:
1 can black beans
1 Tbs olive oil
2-3 cloves garlic, chopped
1 onion, diced
1 red bell pepper, diced
2 smaller green peppers, diced. (these happened to be in my fridge and I wanted to use them up)
1 large tomato, diced
3 cups water
1/2 cube vegetable bullion

2 Tbs tobasco sauce
Black pepper- maybe ~ 10 dashes
Salt to taste
Basil, ~4 dashes
Oregano ~2 dashes
Strange, orange hot spice, written in Japanese. I don’t really know what it is.
Paprika, ~2 dashes
A bit of sugar, maybe 1/2 a tsp? (Optional)
2 hard boiled eggs, sliced
1 cup of dry rice (cook)
1/2 cup mozzarella cheese

“Instructions”
1. Get rice cooking.
2. Sautee garlic and onions in olive oil until onions just start to turn clear, add peppers. Add tomato when you remember you have it sitting in the fridge, waiting for this occasion.
3. While this is going on, bring water to a boil, add bullion. (I also threw in some broccoli stems I had in my fridge, to hopefully give it more flavor and make it more of a vegetable stock. Remove before adding anything else.) Add can of black beans. Add tobacco sauce and spices, sugar (if desired). Bring to a boil.
4. Add vegetables to beans and stock. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat and let simmer approximately 40 minutes. Add eggs at some point during the simmering.

A lot of the spiciness cooks out of this, so you may want to add some more hot spices after cooking.
Sprinkle cheese over soup. Serve over rice with tobacco on the side.

thanksgiving!

Okay, this is a quick post, hopefully I'll get more up later. Things are going well still here in Japan. We had a thanksgiving here in my apartment building yesterday, about 7 Americans and 7 Australians. I made three pumpkin pies in a medium sized toaster oven. I would say they were alright. They were really good considering I hadn't tried out the internet recipies before, and I worked with very basic ingredients, no crisco, baking soda or powder, lard, etc.

Also, Julian, Taube, and Mac deepfried a turkey and made stuffing (I was told they were good). Taube made a vast amount of mashed potatoes. Other people pitched in veggies, salad, fried Japanese potatoey things, wine, juice, cranberries, and corn. Oh yeah, and Mac made some delicious homemade soda bread. Gayleen made these cheesecake pie, the filling was really good. There were a bunch more meat dishes, but I didn't really pay a whole lot of attention to those...
Everyone did an awesome job cooking!

We had a little "what we're thankful for" discussion before dinner. It seemed really wrong to be doing that without Gramma leading the table and asking us all to reflect on how fortunate we are. Also, Although we managed to find 15 matching plates, we did not have a dish for every course, the salad, the butter, and so on. It was rather bizarre not to be digging out the family china and trying to figure out what all the different dishes are for.
Half the group, from left: Terry, Izzy, Karin, Bridgette, Mac, Steph, Gayleen (cut out), Lexi, Me. Not pictured: Julian, Taube, John, Kyoki, Peter, Adrian.

Hugs to my family and friends back home. Although we did an awesome job pulling this off and I love the people here, I am most thankful for the people back home. I'm thinking of you all, have a good thanksgiving and give me a call!