[jenny_islander]

Japanese Farmhouse Breakfast

Easy and Cheap Miso Soup
Fluffy Brown Rice with Optional Meat Garnish * Pickles

For Easy and Cheap Miso Soup, you need a bag of boiler onions (small yellow onions), a bag of light miso, and a spoonful of diced cooked vegetables per person if desired. You can replace the vegetables with one or two small cubes of tofu if you wish, but I have never tried it. Allow one or one half onion per person. Cut it into slivers. Check the miso package for the amount of dashi to heat for each serving. Instead of dashi, use water and/or leftover broth from cooked vegetables and/or leftover meat or fish broth. Throw in the onion while the water is heating and follow the package directions for adding the miso. You can put in the leftover vegetables right at the end.

For Fluffy Brown Rice, soak the rice all day or overnight before cooking; when cooking, follow the package directions, using the maximum amount of water. Do not use precooked or instant rice. Cook a big pot of rice when you are not in a hurry and use it up over 3 days. You can reheat it gently on the stove or use a microwave. The Optional Meat Garnish can be an ounce or two of neat slices of leftover meat, such as a leftover pork chop, or perhaps lunchmeat cut into shapes with small cookie cutters for a Japanese touch. Or use a portion of cooked or canned fish. In any case, put it on top of the rice while the rice reheats.

The Pickles can be right out of a jar. Or look up some recipes for quick Japanese pickles and make a batch to last a week or so--many Japanese "pickles" are really just marinated veggies.