Lisa Johnson

Muji Spinach & Cabbage Miso Soup

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Muji Spinach & Cabbage Miso Soup

Over the last several months, I’ve found myself wanting to have a light soup available quickly. A soup that I didn’t have to make myself. Something more substantial than a bullion cube and that I could keep at home and grab when I wanted.

I’m not sure where I saw Muji soup first, but it was one of the vloggers that I follow on YouTube. Several of them were enjoying Muji soups, snacks and coffee. Everything looked really good, so I went on their website and ordered a bunch of things. This might seem like a sponsored post. I wish! Sadly, it is not. I just enjoy their products.

Muji is a Japanese brand that I first learned about when I saw the store on Newbury Street in Boston a few years ago. I generally don’t like shopping in person that much, so I mostly buy online. But their store is one that was a joy to wander around and look at all the fun items. They have just about everything! Sort of like Target, but with a cool minimalist aesthetic.

Since I’m not in Boston much anymore, I figured it would be easier to order online. The shipping fee was rather expensive, but the delivery was in less than 24 hours from when I ordered. Maybe it was worth it, because I didn’t have to fight Boston traffic or exhaust myself looking for parking going to the store.

Anyway, the soup! It’s quite good. The packages are very small though, so I ended up making two servings, which really feels like one. Unfortunately, I also realized that I probably shouldn’t have too much food containing miso, which is fermented soybeans. For health reasons, I’ve mostly eliminated soy from my diet. Otherwise, I definitely recommend Muji soup and the store overall.

Oh, and writing about soup has me thinking about chowder. Which I prefer to buy rather than make. It’s time to revive The Chowdah Project! So during this month, I hope to try some chowder and blog about it at least once. Now, where shall I go….

Spice Bank at the Boston Public Library

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spices

Unlike a regular bank where you deposit money, instead, the Boston Public Library‘s Spice Bank is looking for spices and dried herbs. Tasty!

Since 2021, the Greater Boston Food Bank and the BPL have joined forces to collect and distribute spices, along with food, to people across Eastern Massachusetts. Library patrons can bring unopened spices and dried herbs to any of the participating library branches (Brighton, Central Library in Copley Square (Newsfeed Café), Charlestown, Connolly, Fields Corner, Jamaica Plain, Lower Mills, Roslindale, Roxbury and South Boston) through April 15, 2024.

The spice bank came about because, “the BPL hopes to offer a way to maintain a sense of cultural identity and family traditions, encourage creative and nutritious cooking, and promote the abundant cultural make up that is found in Massachusetts.” Hopefully this bank will yield a lot of interest. Sorry, I couldn’t help myself!

The BPL is no stranger to innovative programs like this. They have a seed library and over the past few years have given away free gardening kits.

Recently I’ve been trying to visit BPL branches that I’ve never been to before. I visited the Adams Street Dorchester branch most recently, and took out a bunch of books. One of the books is aptly called The Last Chance Library, by Freya Sampson. So far I’m enjoying it. It’s lighthearted and set in England, about a librarian who finds out that her library may be closed down due to budget issues.

Libraries have always been a big part of my life. It’s wonderful that there are many available near where I live. I love seeing how libraries continue supporting communities in so many new and innovative ways.

NaBloPoMo 2023

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NaBloPoMo

Sixteen years! That’s how long it’s been since I first did NaBloPoMo. Way back in 2007. It was the last time too. I may have silently sworn to never do it again. In case you’re not familiar, NaBloPoMo is short for National Blog Posting Month.

It happens in November and was all the rage back in the day, which I’ve heard referred to as the golden age of blogging. Yup! The golden age. When I first heard that I felt like I was 300 years old. I wasn’t sure if it was still a thing. A quick searched revealed that it is, but on a much smaller scale.

Anyway, NaBloPoMo gave a blogging nod to NaNoWriMo, which is National Novel Writing Month. What they both do is give us writers a goal of writing every day during the month.

So why am I doing this now? Because of Vlogtober. I really enjoy Kay Patterson’s vlogs on YouTube. Kay, who lives in Boston, just finished Vlogtober yesterday. For Vlogtober, vloggers post a video each day during October.

I started thinking about how I’d like to blog at least once a week again. Blogging everyday would be a nice jump-start and would make once a week seem like nothing. NaBloPoMo is a marathon, not a sprint, and I know to pace myself accordingly.

Wish me luck and see you back here tomorrow!

Restaurant Rant: Not a Grain Bowl

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Allegedly a grain bowl.

Am I insane for thinking that a grain bowl should have a decent proportion of, uh, grain?

I went out to dinner with friends on Saturday night to a Dorchester neighborhood bar and restaurant. I’m not going to name it, because I don’t like trashing places. The one time that I did, they kept contacting me to go back so they could make it up to me. I didn’t want to go back and the whole thing was very uncomfortable. Lesson learned.

But this has been sitting on my mind and bothering me for days now. The only way to get it out of my system is to write it out of me.

Looking at this dish pictured above, does this look like a grain bowl to you? It does not to me. It’s a green salad masquerading as a grain bowl. I know it’s almost Halloween, but I didn’t plan on getting tricked by my meal!

When I read the menu it seemed pretty straightforward. Here it is below from the website with slight descriptive edits.

“Grain Bowl: couscous, chickpeas, baby kale, feta cheese, cucumber, cherry tomato, Kalamata olives, pickled red onion, and tahini dressing with pan roasted salmon.”

The salmon was an extra that I added on, so the whole meal was $26.00. Not cheap, but a fairly typical price for dinner.

As someone who cooks a lot at home, I’m always very hopeful that what I have at a restaurant is way better or at least as good as what I could have prepared myself.

Based on the menu description, I expected that at the very least, a quarter to third of the dish would be grains and chickpeas. I often make this type of dish at home. I love harvest bowls! There was literally just a dusting of couscous and very few chickpeas underneath the greens. It was basically all greens.

Over the past couple of months, I’ve had some not great meals at restaurants, so I haven’t written about them. But this just seemed ridiculous.

Overall, the meal was good. This green salad was good. It’s just not what I ordered and not what was described on the menu. I even told our server. She asked to take it back, but I said that a side of couscous would be fine. I expected to get a fairly generous portion. Maybe a half a cup? Instead, I received about a quarter cup, if that.

I was shocked. Did they run out of couscous? Rationing chickpeas? Was it a new cook who didn’t know what a grain bowl was and didn’t see the menu description? Good lord why?!

The place had a nice ambience, our server was very attentive and friendly, so I separated my thoughts about the meal from her tip. It wasn’t her fault.

I was so looking forward to a night out with friends. And the three of us had somehow managed to arrange this dinner at the last minute. It was like a miracle! I hadn’t seen them in a while and the most important part was our gathering together. With all that’s happening in the world, the news breaks our hearts a little more everyday.

But my sadness won’t make things any better. So it’s especially important to enjoy my loved ones while I can.

In the greater scheme of life, this grain bowl fiasco could not be more trivial. But the restaurant industry takes the customers as they find them and I was looking for at least what I had seen on the menu.

Do You Watch Eclipses?

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eclipses

Since I was young, I’ve been fascinated by eclipses. If anything can make you feel the mystery and wonder of life, it’s an eclipse. Also, my family, going back generations, has a history with them.

Eclipses are literally dangerous. Looking into one without proper protection can damage our eyes and even cause blindness. Although they are a natural wonder, maybe they’re also a sight that we shouldn’t behold. And that’s not just because we want to protect our eyes.

Even though eclipses seem rare, they happen every year and even have seasons. We’re heading into eclipse season tomorrow, which will be the first in the set, and a solar eclipse. Eclipses happen with new moons and full moons. So one eclipse follows the other. The second eclipse in this set will be with the full moon on October 28th, and a lunar eclipse.

On Chani Nicholas’s weekly astrology podcast, she dives deep into eclipse season. I’ve heard her take on eclipses elsewhere and find it quite striking. She doesn’t think it’s bad or good to look at them, but she prefers not to watch them and just lets them do their thing.

She discusses how eclipses are caused by the light being blocked from our luminaries, the sun and moon, which causes shadows. Basically the connection to our power source or energy is being interfered with and becomes unstable, so there are energy surges. Generally, when we think of things in shadow and power outages, that might not be something we want to invite into our lives. There is a lack of clarity and unpredictability. Things may not be as they seem and maybe we need to wait it out. Also we may feel drained of our energy. So if we’re feeling tired tomorrow, it’s to be expected.

Also, she says that eclipses are about the speeding up of endings and beginnings. The one tomorrow is about release and letting things go. This makes a lot of sense to me. As I mentioned in a post back in August, my federal student loans were forgiven. Which was wonderful, I didn’t have to make payments. However, they were still showing up on my credit report, so it didn’t truly feel like they were gone. The weight of them wasn’t completely gone. Today, they finally disappeared from my credit report! I can fully let them go energetically. They are really gone. Maybe the upcoming eclipse helped sweep them away.

Anyway, if you’re looking for a safer alternative to following tomorrow’s eclipse, NASA has you covered with their new 2023 Eclipse Explorer: Your Interactive Guide to the 2023 Annular Solar Eclipse.

Needless to say, NASA will be busy tomorrow. Did you hear that NASA plans to fire rockets directly into the eclipse’s shadow? Kind of wild. The article on the NASA website explains more.

“The mission, known as Atmospheric Perturbations around the Eclipse Path or APEP, is led by Aroh Barjatya, a professor of engineering physics at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Florida, where he directs the Space and Atmospheric Instrumentation Lab.

Some 50 miles up and beyond, the air itself becomes electric. Scientists call this atmospheric layer the ionosphere because it is where the UV component of sunlight can pry electrons away from atoms to form a sea of high-flying ions and electrons. The Sun’s constant energy keeps these mutually attracted particles separated throughout the day. But as the Sun dips below the horizon, many recombine into neutral atoms for the night, only to part ways again at sunrise.

During a solar eclipse, the sunlight vanishes and reappears over a small part of the landscape almost at once. In a flash, ionospheric temperature and density drop, then rise again, sending waves rippling through the ionosphere. …

The APEP team plans to launch three rockets in succession – one about 35 minutes before local peak eclipse, one during peak eclipse, and one 35 minutes after. They will fly just outside the path of annularity, where the Moon passes directly in front of the Sun. Each rocket will deploy four small scientific instruments that will measure changes in electric and magnetic fields, density, and temperature. If they are successful, these will be the first simultaneous measurements taken from multiple locations in the ionosphere during a solar eclipse.”

It will be fascinating to learn their findings and see the changes that this eclipse season brings.