I relaize I’m a bit late to the party but wanted to throw ina a soup suggestion for the BEST SOUP EVER (at least in my world) it is the White Bean, Kale and orange squash soup from this site! http://www.culinate.com/user/ruth_117/favorites/white_bean_orange_squash_and_green_kale_soup

By the way up here in Canada we are having a warm spell with a balmy 21 degrees today! The snow is even melting. Yowsers!

On cold or rainy days, hot pot is the best... You’ll need those ‘portable gas stove’ thing to put in your table and cans of hexane gas(no more than one can of gas will be consumed per meal... so if you bought a pack of 4 cans, you just got enough gas for 5 meals). For the actual pot, low earthen pot is best and a lowish pot is good. Frying pan is bad.

Actual soup(or the soup you begin with): We like to do plain water + shiitake mushroom (fresh or dried... if dried, please return them to life first by soaking) + daikon radish and maybe carrot. Cook this in the pot until it boils. Also, prepare a kettle full of hot water because as dinner go on, water level of the pot lowers and you’d have to add more water.

I heard somewhere that chicken stock soup to start with is good. I also heard that miso soup as base is bad but I haven’t tried.

During dinner, the portable gas stove is turned on and the soup inside pot should be near boiling or boiling most of the time. Use a ladle with holes, put some fast cooking ingredients in, and as soon as it cooks, take out and eat. Use long cooking chopsticks. Dipping sauces: we like to use our specialty green onion + ginger + sizzling oil sauce that are prepared a few hrs before dinner. Other dipping sauces: sesame, yuzu, soysauce.

Suggested Foods to cook in pot:
-chicken thigh or breast, cut into thin strips or thin slices, marinade with salt and corn starch
-pork, cut into thin strips or thin slices or use ground meat and shape into meatballs
-beef and lamb, if you can find them in supermarkets as thinly sliced meat, to use in ‘shabu shabu’
-fish filet, cut into strips and marinade with salt, pepper, corn starch, and oil
-shrimp, short necked clams and seafood, wash well. Shrimp should be deshelled and marinaded with salt, pepper, corn starch, and oil. If the item won’t cook fast, slice them.

Suggestion for vegetables (for all of them, wash well and break into appropriate sizes)
-spinach, break into leaves and stems
-iceburg lettuce, separate leaves.
-other lettuce
-napa cabbage
-enoki mushrooms
-shungiku
-root vegetables, such as carrots, should be cut into stewing size and put into the pot at the beginning.

After something raw goes in, wait until that item cooks, and then take it out and eat.

Leave some room in stomach after meal, because the ending soup in the pot is a collection of yumminess. Add precooked rice(white or brown, left over rice is good) into it, wait until it boils, and then crack an egg in, and stop heat. Mix until egg sets and then enjoy a Japanese style risotto.