Pinch of Yum

It’s got big punchy flavor from fresh garlic and lime juice, and it’s extremely filling thanks to that creamy peanut sauce and the tangled pile of carbs known as soba noodles, and it’s also colorful and crunchy and fresh, so yes, it is my favorite category of food. It comes in those little bunches wrapped with a little strip of cute paper, and after it’s cooked and soaked in some sauce (peanut sauce is life) For this recipe, I actually revisited an older soba noodle salad recipe from 2014-ish that had been long since forgotten and revised it just slightly: A little more heat, some new veg, and a swap of lime juice for vinegar. Peanut Noodle Salad (our favorite way to combine veggies, protein, and noodles) Watch

This is a happy little green salad loaded with tender juicy shrimp, buttery avocado, crisp cucumber bites, peanuts, cilantro, limes, homemade wonton strips if you are gonna go all out, and a heavy-handed pour of light, creamy, and perfectly sweet miso dressing. This is a completely simplified version, because maybe I didn’t happen to remember to look for a daikon radish at the grocery store this weekend, and maybe I don’t keep crab stocked in my fridge, and maybe my thumb was too tired from phone usage to shred carrots. A word about those homemade wonton strips: just cut wonton wrappers into strips and fry them in a little bit of oil over low heat; drain on paper towels and sprinkle with salt. BA says that miso is “a fermented paste that’s made by inoculating a mixture of soybeans with a mold called koji (for you science folks, that’s the common name for Aspergillus oryzae) that’s been cultivated from rice, barley, or soybeans.

It reminds me a little bit of the chicken wild rice soup in that we just start pretty basic with carrots, celery, onions, chicken, spices, and broth in a crockpot. Unlike the wild rice soup, this chicken gnocchi soup is made thick by evaporated milk and a quick cornstarch slurry. ” I could almost actually call this Chicken and Dumpling soup except the Chicken and Dumpling soup of my youth (a Herman’s bakery special in Cambridge, MN) had approximately zero vegetables and was practically untouchable in its level of homey perfection, so I will not go there. You can use something other than evaporated milk, but I found that evaporated milk has the creaminess of half and half or heavy whipping cream without actually needing to use up a bunch of half and half in the soup.

It feels like we’ve lived about ten years in the last three months (maybe you too?), so today I’d love to play catch up with you and share a little bit about what’s been going on for us in our personal life over the last few months. It feels like we’ve lived about ten years in the last three months (maybe you too?), so today I’d love to play catch up with you and share a little bit about what’s been going on for us in our personal life over the last few months, most of it centering around – A few weeks after Lena was born, I called my parents on FaceTime and just started crying as I talked through the what-are-we-going-to-do decision map yet again, knowing that Bjork and I were both losing our minds trying to care for a newborn and a toddler 24/7 inside the confines of our house (thank you, winter), but also feeling so worried about potentially exposing our brand new baby to Covid via our various childcare options, OR exposing our parents or caregivers to OUR exposures, right when things were peaking here in Minnesota. The day we brought Lena home from the hospital and seeing her together with Solvi… even running on minutes of sleep and being in some crazy state of mind, it was one of the happiest moments of my life.