I Yike Houp ( I like Soup )

I Yike Houp is how my 2.5 year old says "I like Soup."
It's terribly adorable. I like to linger on how adorable it is, and then turn around the try to help her say it the correct way. We're working in it.
Anyway, I DO like soup!
If you ask my husband ( who isn't really fond of soup )
... its not that he isn't fond of soup, he just doesn't agree that soup is a meal. He is a steak and potatoes or burger and fries guy. Porkchops and applesauce. You get the gist...
My husband would tell you that I would eat soup every day. because I am so fond of it. I try to make it for lunch on weekdays because he isn't home. When I make it I usually eat it all in one sitting, too. What can I say? I yike houp.

I made this one today: Coconut Shrimp Soup. It sure is tasty. I got the recipe from a website that I found on Pinterest. But after having made it a couple of times, I have perfected the recipe to make it even better!!

Here goes:
1 Tbsp Vegetable Oil
1/2 Tbsp Ginger ( the original recipe calls for fresh ginger, but I always have a squeeze tube of ginger handy so I use that instead )
2 cloves minced garlic or 1/2 Tbsp ( the same here; I have a jar of minced garlic because I can't stand my fingers constantly smelling of it, so I keep a large quantity handy. )
1/4 tsp red pepper flakes ( if you can stand it to be hotter, go with 1/2. I don't make it hotter because the kids eat it, too )
2 carrots peeled and sliced thin. ( I chop the ends off the carrots and then use the peeler to make thin slices of carrot )
1 Tbsp Corn Starch
1 Tbsp Water
2 Cups Seafood or Chicken Broth
1 Can of Coconut Milk
1/2 Cup Chopped Frozen Spinach
1 tsp salt
1 tsp of pepper ( or more, if you like pepper. I do )
1-2 Tbsp of Parsley ( optional and only if you don't have the spinach )
2 Handfulls of Shrimp. Peeled, De-veined and the tails pulled off
A small handful of Angel hair pasta, broken into thirds. ( roughly about the width of a quarter )

I start by heating up the oil in a large pan or pot. I add the ginger, garlic and pepper flakes. When the ginger becomes aeromatic and the garlic starts to brown ( not black, don't burn it! )
Add the carrots and stir a couple of times.
Add the coconut milk and stir in.
Wait about a minute and add your 2 cups of broth.
In the meantime, dissolve 1 tbsp of corn starch in 1 tbsp of water.
Once the soup comes to a boil, add the cornstarch/ water mixture.
Let simmer for about a minute.
Add the spinach and stir.
Break your pasta into thirds and add it into the pot.
You're going to simmer about 3-4 minutes, stirring every so often.
Add your salt and pepper, stirring to mix.
After 3-4 minutes, add your shrimp.
If you're not using spinach, you will add your parsley here.
Let simmer an additional 1 minute.
And Viola! You're done.

The original recipe called for lime juice and cilantro. Not a fan. So, I eliminated them and added the spinach. I also substituted the broth instead of the 3 cups of water that the recipe called for. It made it runny and not that tasty. Watered down? Yes, it was.
So, the seafood or chicken broth adds more depth of flavor to the soup.

If you don't eat it all in one sitting, the soup will thicken up over time. So, you may have to add some water or more broth to thin it back out upon another heating.

                                Super Good. Souper easy. ( <- See what I did there? Eh? Funny. ) :)

                                     Don't Forget to take the tails off. It makes for easier eating!

Something Cute.

Last night when we were visiting my in-laws house, after dinner we were all just sitting around conversing about the norm. How the girls are doing, who is getting married, having babies... etc.
We started talking about photos, and Andy pulled out his wallet to show his mom the new photos of the girls that I had taken. While flipping through the photos I came across my Senior Picture. I had given this one to him after we had already been dating, well into our twenties. His mom asked if that was the photo I had given to him in highschool. Although it wasn't he actually DOES have a photo I gave to him in high school.

- Mini Back story here : If you didn't already know, Andy and I have known each other since Freshman year of high school. -

I had about 5 different photos of my to give to people for my Senior ones. You know, the wallet-sized photos you pass out to friends your Senior year. I had several poses. One of the photos that I had taken for my senior portraits was me in a baseball hat. I was a tomboy. I loved baseball hats. I used to have really long hair and always wore a pony tail with it. It was my favorite photo. It was fall, I was wearing an old sweater that I had gotten from Goodwill ( gosh I loved shopping at that store and getting second hand T-shirts and sweaters )
The photo was so me. Tomboy and in a sweater, in the fall with the changing leaves. That's why I loved it.
The hat that I used in the pictures was one that I had found in the parking lot at school one day. It was a beat-up, blue ADIDAS hat. I used to wear it all the time, it was awesomely worn in and comfortable. I didn't wash it. I just found it one day and plopped it on my head. The hat was immortalized in one of my senior pictures.
I lost the hat. I don't know where it went or if I left it somewhere, etc... but it is gone. I was pretty upset about it. But I imagine that the hat had to make its way onto someone else who was to love it. You know, kinda like a traveling hat who wandered its way through life to people who needed it. ( this was the story in my head )
Several, several years later, after I had started dating Andy, he was looking through some pictures of mine and came across all of my senior ones. He got to the one of me in the blue hat.
"I had a hat JUST like that." He said.
I joked that it probably was his hat because I found it.
"That IS my hat!"
Come to find out, he had lost his hat when we were in high school, right around the same time that I was to find that blue adidas hat in the parking lot at school.
We're 100% convinced that the hat that he lost was the hat that I had discovered.

We told his mom that story and she smiled the entire time.
"It was fate"
Perhaps. But it is a pretty good story to tell people. Maybe we were meant to end up together.
It's kismet that something that belonged to my future husband would be photographed in my high school portraits.
And I am sorry I lost his hat. It would have made an even better one if I still had it. Now That would have blown everyone's mind. I still would have kept it, though. You know, finders keepers and all.  I would have let him borrow it from time to time. I joke with him that if I would have known it was his hat, I probably still wouldn't have given it back.

And these are the new photos of the girls that Andy is now carrying in his wallet, a long with a photo of me when I was 17.