Not an egg mcmuffin at all, but for meal prepped breakfasts, I usually make a bunch of steamed buns or dumplings and have them with soup and rice, all 3 quick and easy to heat up in the morning and can be prepped ahead of time.
Though I admit it might not be as quick as an egg sandwich to eat. These days I’ve been having muesli and cottage cheese. Again, maybe slower to eat, but the prep time is about as long as it takes to take a half cup scoop of two things 😁
I buy chicken/beef bouillon powder and use that with dry noodles. You can make a mushroom broth by steeping dried mushrooms in hot water for 15-30 minutes, too.
Someone else mentioned daishi, that’s a great soup base as well. If you wanna spend a little more time on it, you can boil kombu and dried anchovies placed in a tea bag in a pot of water to make a larger batch of broth.
I feel hanging shelves and putting tchotchkes on em really add a lot of personal touches. I went with some geometric shaped shelves that I placed in a pattern on the wall and put some object de arte on em and that did a lot of good for making it feel more homey. I’m embellishing a bit on “object de arte”, I got a go set, a red wax elephant, a Star Trek ship and a small plant on there, just some stuff that relates to my interests and a few splashes of color.
If you’re nervous about putting holes in the wall, some wire frame shelving units can work, too, and you can get them in all sorts of shapes and sizes these days. If you search using the keywords “geometric” or “asymmetrical”, you can easily find some designs that help break up the flat lines of a book case style shelf that I feel adds a dynamic feel to the decoration.
Lastly, if you can splurge for it, there’s always the classic paintings. Find an artist you like and go for a print or two. I went with stuff by Kandinsky, but I really like that sort of abstract, dynamic piece, to my boyfriend’s chagrin, so maybe talk about it with the people you live with first more than I did (he’s come to tolerate it plenty fine though and we get compliments all the time so haha I win).
Happily! Just make sure to remove the guts of the anchovies before using them for stock. It’s easily done with a knife or even your fingers. Honestly, I’m not sure why you have to do that, I was just always instructed to do it that way.
Which episode is this, again? I’ve been showing my Trek adverse boyfriend some of the more fun episodes of DS9 after he sat down to view the baseball ep with me and I wanna show him this one! (Other suggestions gladly welcomed)
Can you tell me more about growing onions from the bulbs? I usually cut mine fairly close to the root growth at the bottom, maybe leaving 1 cm of onion white, and throw it in the freezer with other veggie scraps to later boil and clarify for broth, but I am CONSTANTLY buying green onions for soups, dumplings, stirfries, grilling, what-have-you, so I’m very interested in this idea. I live in apartment with a bay window which is ripe for a planter, so this sounds potentially very useful.
I’m using dried mushrooms that look very similar to shiitake but are not labeled shiitake that I get from a Chinese grocer (they taste similar and are cheaper by weight).
There are two methods I use for two different purposes, though my reasoning for such is fairly arbitrary.
When making stir fry or similar dishes where I want sliced mushrooms, I wash the dried mushrooms, then pour boiling water over them and let them sit for 15 minutes or so or until they are thoroughly soft. Then I’ll squeeze em out and use like fresh. I’ll save the water (now brownish with mushroom… flavor?) for use as veggie broth in any situation.
When making noodle soups, I am far lazier. I will wash the dried mushrooms then place them directly into a pot with about a third more water (tap, room temp, or boiling from the kettle, that’s faster) than I think I need for soup and simply boil them over medium-high heat, covered, for about 10 minutes until they’re plump. This results in seemingly less potent, but still noticeable, mushroom broth. Then I add my other ingredients as is appropriate. I eat these whole as they have a meaty texture I enjoy in my mainly veg soups and I honestly cannot be assed to cut them after they plump up if I’ve already decided to make an easy noodle soup.
For what it’s worth, I’m sure using method one and including the resulting broth in the soup would work just fine, it’s just that I am determined to make my lazy hot pot noodle soup a one-pot affair.
I’ve found some brands of dried mushrooms need trimming or else the stem is too woody and hard, even with soaking. Some brands don’t need this. Your milage will vary and I hope this helps!