Super Healthy Fava Bean and Lentil Soup Recipe

Update! (04/11/2011)

So I just made soup again and let me tell you, it came out even better than before. This is what I did differently. Everything is in addition to the recipe below unless mentioned.

—-

So my little sister was down here on spring break and I wanted to send something back with up with her to Berkley. She is graduating in May, and is going right back to school to be a Dr. (Proud of you sis!)

I decided to try my hand at making some super healthy Fava Bean and Lentil soup. This is how it went down.

This recipe doesn’t use any added salt and is low sodium for anyone watching their intake. Add or remove ingredients as you wish, the recipe is forgiving.

Ingredients:

– 1 Large bag of Brown Fava Beans(like 1.5 lbs)
– 1 Large bag of Green Lentils (like 1.5 lbs)
– 3 Spicy Sausages Chopped
– 1/2 cup of Basmati rice
– 2 Large brown onions
– 3 Whole Garlic
– Fresh Ginger
– 1/4 Stick of butter
– 3-6 Chicken Drumsticks
– Olive Oil
– 4 Carrots
– 6 Celery Sticks
– 5 Green Onions
– 3 Tomatoes coarsely chopped
– 2 Green Bell Peppers
– 1 Red Bell Pepper
– 2 Spicy green peppers (your choice)
– Fideos
– Black Pepper
– Rosemary
– Thyme
– Red Pepper
– Oregano
– Whatever other spices you want

– A big pot
– A blender(You can also smash some of the beans if you dont have this)

– Whiskey(To drink while you cook) =)

Prep:

– Soak the Brown Fava beans in water for at least 8 hours.

Start:

1. Throw the butter into your pot, med heat, until it melts.

2. Throw drum sticks in pot with the butter until they brown a bit on all sides. Remove the skin on the drumsticks and return to pot.

3. Finely cut your ginger(amount to taste) and coarsely chop your 2 onions, garlic’s, Bell Peppers, Spicy Peppers and Green onions. Add all these to the pot with a little olive oil along with the sausages. Cook for like 10 minutes.

4. Rinse then pour your Fava beans in the pot, fill with water until the beans are covered. Bring to a simmer.

5. Chop up your celery(de husk them) tomatoes and carrots, throw them into the pot.

6. Add all your seasonings(No salt, this hardens the outside of the beans, add at the end if you want)

7. Simmer on low for 3 hours. Add water as needed.

8. Add red lentils, cut “Fideos” browned in butter, and rice. Add water as needed, bring up to heat and simmer for 45 minutes.

9. Remove the chicken bones. I fished around for them with the ladle, not to hard. If any meat hasn’t fallen off the bone, make it fall off the bone with a knife or fingers =) and put the meat back into the pot. Throw the bones away.

10. This is per desired texture. I ladled out half of the beans soup and blended it , returning the blender mixture back to the pot.

11, Serve! Adding some fresh squeezed lemon juice and\or salt to taste.

* I filled up a large Tupperware with half the soup and froze it overnight for the trip back up to Berkley with the sister.

Here are a few pics of the process:

Chicken, garlic and onions ready to go in.
Chicken, Onions and Garlic

Onions and Celery chopped.

Ready to blend
Pot and Blender

Sources:

A few phone calls with Dad. =)

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Three Awesome Music Videos (A Toccata, Chatroulette and Rap song)

La Toccata es increíble – This lady plays with passion, very fun to listen to.

The ultimate Chatroulette love song – Diana! Nicely Done.

Slaughter Rico 5 Dolla Nigga – Really nice flow style. Go out gangster style.

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Incredible Tsunami Videos of Japan 2011 (and UFOs?)

Updated 04/12/2011

Natural disasters of this magnitude are rarely recorded. I’ve gathered some videos of the recent Tsunami in Japan that demonstrate the power and destruction of nature.

Also of interest are groups of people who believe there were several UFOs around at the same time as this disaster, I posted a few videos of that at the bottom, weird.

This video pretty much sums it up. Crazy incredible.

UFO Videos

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Nostalgic Video Game Music

Had sent this link to myself a few days ago. Not sure where I found it but pretty awesome stuff if you’re into video games. Classic techno remixes, old school melodies. Click the “Continue reading →” link to hear the stream(It auto plays so I took it off front page).

Of note, music from:
– Mega Man
– Legend of Zelda
– Star Fox
– Super Mario Brothers
– Top Gear
– Xeno Gears
– Chrono Trigger
and more of the same.

Continue reading

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How Fresh is the Bread at the Supermarket?

Ever notice how the little plastic bag closers at the end of the bread are different colors?

These colors often(though not always) indicate the day of the week the bread was baked.

You can remember them alphabetically:

* Blue = Monday
* Green = Tuesday
* Red = Thursday
* White = Friday
* Yellow = Saturday

(I guess they don’t normally bake bread on Wednesdays or Sundays)

Also a nice little graphic lifted from Wisebread.

Note this is not true for all bread types. If you always buy the same type of bread it may make sense to call up the bakery to ask.

Sources:
http://www.snopes.com/food/prepare/breadtag.asp
http://www.wisebread.com/breaking-the-bread-code-how-to-get-the-freshest-loaf

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Fossils of Life found on Meteorites

Only read synopsis so far, will try to read more of the actual paper later on. Check out the link at bottom.

The implications are that life is everywhere, and that life on Earth may have come from other planets.

Richard B. Hoover, Ph.D. NASA/Marshall Space Flight Center

Dr. Hoover has discovered evidence of microfossils similar to Cyanobacteria, in freshly fractured slices of the interior surfaces of the Alais, Ivuna, and Orgueil CI1 carbonaceous meteorites. Based on Field Emission Scanning Electron Microscopy (FESEM) and other measures, Dr. Hoover has concluded they are indigenous to these meteors and are similar to trichomic cyanobacteria and other trichomic prokaryotes such as filamentous sulfur bacteria. He concludes these fossilized bacteria are not Earthly contaminants but are the fossilized remains of living organisms which lived in the parent bodies of these meteors, e.g. comets, moons, and other astral bodies. The implications are that life is everywhere, and that life on Earth may have come from other planets.

Members of the Scientific community were invited to analyze the results and to write critical commentaries or to speculate about the implications. These commentaries will be published on March 7 through March 10, 2011.

http://journalofcosmology.com/Life100.html

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Awesome Lobster and Crab Mac and Cheese

Ok, I might clean this recipe up a bit later but after cooking all this and drinking some white wine this evening this is what I put together.

what you’ll need:
– pasta (mix it up)
– 2.5lb lobster
– 1 Dungeoness crab
– .75 lb Xtra Shrp Cheddar
– .5 lb Gruyere
– White wine
– Panko crumbs
– Flour
– Truffle oil ( i could not find this on short notice…. find it! and class it up.)
– Cherry tomatoes
– 3 Green onions
– 1/2 Big Brown Onion
– Whole milk
– Butter
– Salt
– Pepper

how to cook it:

0.
Open the bottle of wine and pour yourself a drink.

1.
Cook yourself like a 2lb lobster and a dungeoness crab, and get the meat out. That’s another recipe.

2.
Prepare like 1.5 lbs of pasta, mix 2 or 3 of your favorites. Throw some large shell pasta in there, the texture works well for this.(If you have water left over from cooking the lobster and/or crab, strain that water and boil your pasta in that!)

3.
In a big pot(we’re going to throw the pasta in here later) put in like a half stick of butter, half a diced large brown onion and a little red pepper if you get down like that.

Whisk Whisk

4.
After about three minutes put in like 3/4 of a garlic, diced. Add some more butter if it looks weak.

Whisk Whisk

5.
After 2 minutes, add some flour, I don’t know how much, just shake a little bit in there, not too much. You just want it to mix with the butter and start it browning.

Whisk Whisk

6.
Put like 3 cups of whole milk in there. throw some white wine in there, and take some wine for yourself.

Whisk Whisk

7.
Once it heats up add two egg yolks and mix in

Whisk Whisk fast dont let the eggs yolks sit or touch the sides if possible.

8.
Mix in the shredded gruyere and the shredded extra sharp cheddar. Put more cheese in if you want.

Add more milk to make consistency like nacho cheese.

Whisk

9.
Mix in your pasta slowly.

10.
Add your lobster, crab meat and green onions. Fold together

11.
Throw all that in a baking pan with like a dozen or so cherry tomatoes cut into quarters mixed in.

12.
Top with Panko bread crumbs, pat down lightly with hand.

13.
Throw in the over at 350 for like 10-15 minutes then broil that sucker until the top gets brown.

Note:
If it looks like it’s too dry during the bake, heat some whole milk and butter in a sauce pan and pour it all over the top asap.




Difficult to plate my casseroled pasta I learned.

SOURCES:

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/date-plate/lobster-macaroni-and-cheese-recipe/index.html

http://www.thefoodinmybeard.com/2010/03/lobster-mac-and-cheese.html

http://www.closetcooking.com/2010/12/crab-mac-and-cheese.html

http://planetgreen.discovery.com/food-health/crab-mac-cheese-appetizer.html

http://userealbutter.com/2009/02/14/crab-mac-cheese-recipe/

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Burn Skin Repair Technique – Skin Spraying

This is an experimental technique that involves spraying a burn victims wounds with the patients own cells. As you can tell by the 4 day recovery shown in the video, this has immense potential.


Source:http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/series/explorer/4828/Overview

Posted in Health, Science | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Amazing Spray Paint Space Art

This guy is incredible, I love the technique of getting the art details by spray painting on top of objects and stripping the wet paint off the canvas with newspaper.

The video is from spacepainting.com

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Most Distant Galaxy Ever Seen in Universe

Using the Hubble telescope a compact galaxy of blue stars was found at 13.2 billion light years away. =-O

Check out this incredible video, it also gives you a scope of how large our universe is.

This video is a zoom into the Hubble Space Telescope infrared Ultra Deep Field, first taken in 2009. It is a very small patch of sky in the southern constellation Fornax. The zoom centers on the farthest identified object in the field. The object, possibly a galaxy, looks red because its light has been stretched by the expansion of the universe. Credit: NASA/ESA/G. Bacon, STScI

Article Source

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