John has been back for over a week and I still haven't shown you guys practically anything I cooked while he was gone! Well, we'll just have to fix that.

First, I made some delicious spicy broth with somen. This kind of soup is especially good if you need to eat something immediately, as it takes maybe five or ten minutes to cook from scratch.

Spicy somen broth

This business was super easy. Sauté garlic, fresh ginger, hot and bell peppers, and mushrooms in olive oil; add broth of your choice and heat to boiling; add somen noodles and cook for one more minute. Somen noodles do really only take one minute to cook, so be careful!

Take the pan off the heat and season your soup with soy sauce, rice wine vinegar, sesame oil, and sriracha sauce or sambal oelek. Serve alone or over a handful of raw spinach. Garnish with fresh chopped herbs and greens, such as chives, green onion, or mint. Personally, I ate plenty of John's mortal enemy, cilantro.

Later, I had a number of plates of scrambled eggs with cottage cheese and veg, as previously mentioned. I had some oatmeal with toasted nuts and sesame seeds. And then I made a gigantic pot of jambalaya and ate it for four separate meals over three days. Oh man, was that ever a good idea.

Since I'd never made jambalaya before, I poked around the internet for suggestions, and eventually decided to make Anger Burger Sunday's jambalaya.

Most of the procedure was pretty straightforward. I did have to make up a batch of the cajun spice mixture (never to be referred to as "Emeril's Essence," because ICK), but that was ok. It's a good thing I overbought several of the ingredients for our xmas bbq spice rub; otherwise I'd never have had garlic or onion powder on hand.

The final product was almost exactly what I'd wanted: a massive pot of thick, serious, medium-spicy stew full of tomatoes, pepper chunks, chicken sausage, and baby shrimp. I did end up adding some extra hot sauce to the mix, but that's no big surprise. SPICE FOREVERR.

This picture is from day three, at which point the rice had just about completely disintegrated. That was fine with me, though. It almost started taking on some characteristics of a spicy, meaty congee: perfect to eat before going blissfully off to sleep. Success!