Lemon-Ginger Miso Soup (& My Favourite Recipe App for Android)

Androidians, rejoice!

(Take note, Rob does not approve of said term. He prefers Android users. How boring.)

Since forever, I have been trying to find the perfect way to store my bookmarked recipes.

I have progressed from storing them in emails, then to pinterest and pocket. (I know others use Evernote). I use Eat Your Books primarily for my cookbook collections. Although I can upload other recipes, too, I prefer to have the directions along with the recipe list. 🙂

A lot of people have a hard time understanding pinterest. What is it for? How does it work? I try to explain it is a picturesque way to bookmark links. Pictures with links. It is used to inspire. My biggest pet peeve is the lack of searchability, which limits its use as a workable list of recipes. I can’t search for all the recipes with mango instance. Furthermore, it only links to a website which can later be modified or even vanish. Hence my migration to pocket, which I mainly use as an offline web reader now. Because you can’t search that one either.

I recently discovered a crazy wonderful app that I had to share: ChefTap. (Android only for now)

Designed specifically to store recipes, it does its job.

From the website: ChefTap is the only app on the market that uses an advanced artificial intelligence engine specifically designed to find recipes on any English language web page.

It stores recipes offline, completely searchable, so you always have access to them. It will pick out the recipe, picture, title, etc from any website, even if the recipe is buried under lots of text (like most blog posts). It will sync with epicurious, allrecipes, or your other favourite recipe sites. However, I was in awe that it could export all the recipes from pinterest. Plug in an album and it will crawl all your links and add them to the app. You can’t even export your pins any other way, as far as I know. How awesome is that?

So, I have just begun to use the app (you can change it so it won’t go to sleep on you while cooking, wahoo!) and I would say the miss rate is around 10% for picking up the wrong title, etc. It is easy to  fix things, though, as it has alternative title suggestions, or move things around like yields and ingredients. Another con is that this is a device-only app, but a complementary web site seems to be in the works.

I started with importing all my pins and will work towards my lengthy email folder filled with recipes. All I need to do is convert the emails into .txt files and they can be easily imported as well. How awesome is that??

I’ll tell you what’s more awesome: This app is free!!

(I bet you thought I was going to say it is only yours for $9.999 or something. I hate that, too! I have yet to be corrupted by commercial influence. Anything I recommend is because I honestly recommend it)

In case you are interested in some of my other favourite apps, here they are:

iAnnotate PDF: For highlighting, marking up pdfs for studying, etc. The Android app is not as smooth at the iPhone one, but the one for Android is free

Any.Do: Great to do app that syncs with google tasks

8tracks: I love the music selection here, but this app is notorious for crashing if I shut off my tablet. Feel free to listen to my playlist (from a few years ago)!

Songza: I haven’t been that wowed by the music selection, but it isn’t that bad

(I love pandora but I can’t get it in Canada, btw).

What are your favourite apps? How do you store recipes?
(I have been bugging Rob to make me a Taste Space app, but that’s likely never to happen…)

Now for today’s recipe!

I don’t know about you, but I am a big suck when I get sick. My energy gets drained and I usually just want to crawl into bed and sleep. The last thing I want to do is cook. The second to last thing I want to do is photograph said food. The third last thing I want to do is write about said food.

Which is why it has taken me so long to share this fabulous soup. I usually bust it out when I am sick. (And yes, I still get sick. My diet does not make me immune from viruses and the like. A flu shot helps, though).

I first made this soup when I lived alone and it has become a sicky staple ever since. As long as my kitchen is reasonably well stocked, there is nothing easier than a bowl of miso soup.

You can go ultra-simple for a fix of miso soup – all you need is miso, hot water and perhaps some green onions. However, Tess’ recipe goes one step beyond: a Lemon-Ginger Miso Soup. Lemon and ginger are great as a pick-me-up when sick, comforting yet zingy. Best of all, though, this soup literally takes 5 minutes to make. Awesome on any given day, but really fabulous when you are under the weather and can’t stand to wait any longer. Just heat up the soup before it boils so that you still get the benefits from miso (heck I do that with my tea as well because I can’t drink boiling water). I really liked the combination of lemon, ginger and miso.

The recipe serves 2, so if a sweetie is cooking for you, they can enjoy it as well. Or if home alone, you can have it as a delicious breakfast the next day.

This is my submission to this week’s Weekend Wellness, Virtual Vegan Potluck and to Deb for this week’s Souper Sundays.

Lemon-Ginger Miso Soup
Adapted from Radiant Health, Inner Wealth

3 tbsp miso (white preferred)
1.5 cups water
2 tsp freshly grated ginger root
2 tbsp fresh lemon juice (half a lemon)
1.25 tsp low-sodium tamari or soy sauce
1/2 tsp toasted sesame oil
1.5 tsp sesame seeds, toasted
2 tbsp green onion, finely chopped

1. In a small pot, mix together the miso with 1/4 cup of the water. Mix until well blended. Add the remainder of the water and then the ginger, lemon juice, tamari, and toasted sesame oil.

2. Heat soup until warm. Do not boil. This won’t take more than 5 minutes.

3. Once warm, sprinkle with green onions and toasted sesame seeds.

Serves 2.