Cassie’s Ruminations

Emma’s Graduation and Some Udon Soup

It was a rainy and chilly weekend ushering in the first day of fall. It was another Emma focused weekend, as the poor thing is having some more gut issues, but she was feeling up to going to her last day of puppy kindergarten. It was a review day, and she did great. Then we got a certificate of completion, a gourmet dog cookie, a little goodie bag with some new toys, a picture with a cute graduation hat (Emma was not the biggest fan of this 😉 ) and some quality play time. Emma loves to play with other dogs, and she became good friends with Annabelle, a goldendoodle in the class. I’m sure she’ll miss getting to play with her.

Since it was chilly, yesterday’s dinner was some homemade udon soup. The ingredients are somewhat specialized, and you might need to make a trip to an oriental grocery store, but you might find them in a well-stocked grocery store as well. There are some great online stores as well, such as Asian Food Grocer. I’ll use them to link to similar products for the ingredient list below.

Udon Soup
Serves 2

1 packet (5 g, 1 tsp) dashi soup base

1 tbsp soy sauce

6 cups water

3 oz dried udon noodles

15 g (about 1/2 cup) dried shiitake or dried gourmet mushroom mix (found at Costco, or similarly from the website mentioned)

2 g (about 1 tbsp) precut wakame (seaweed)

Stir together the water, soy sauce, and dashi stock powder. Bring to a boil. Add the udon noodles and the mushrooms and return to a boil. Reduce the heat to low and simmer for 12-14 minutes or until the noodles are tender. In the last two minutes of cooking, add the wakame. Remove from the heat and divide the soup into bowls.