Otsu

I haven't been cooking lately.  Sometimes I just am not in the mood - this time it's lasted for weeks.  I haven't even baked anything.  I'll plan to, and then when the time comes I just don't feel like doing it.  Now it's time to break out of the rut.

Recently I went with my sister's Girl Scout troop on a few field trips.  They are learning about local and sustainable foods, so we visited Griggstown Quail Farm, Cherry Grove Farm, Whole Earth Center, A Better World Cafe, and the Highland Park and Rutgers Gardens farm markets.  I frequently go to the Rutgers Gardens market, but the rest of these are places I've meant to visit and hadn't had time (motivation?) to go.  At Whole Earth Center I was reminded by the wide selection that I had been meaning to try soba noodles.  One of my favorite recipe sources, 101 Cookbooks, has several recipes using soba noodles, but I chose the one that is also in her cookbook, Super Natural Cooking.

This was an interesting recipe.  We followed it pretty closely, except that we ignored the step of rinsing the soba noodles to cool them down.  We thought it would be better warm.  Well, we were wrong.  It would definitely have been better at room temperature, especially since the hot noodles warmed up the cucumber (yuck).  We also put in the amount of cayenne pepper called for in the recipe, which turned out to be way too spicy for me.  The tofu also kind of fell apart - definitely not what was meant to happen.

I think I would try this again, but do it right, and with a LOT less spice.  Soba noodles are yummy - I am looking forward to experimenting with them more.