overkill makes the broth unnecessary

I'm pretty good at overreacting.  Most of the time, I can keep myself in check (after years of admonishing looks from Mister when I was on the verge of being a high-maintenance girlfriend).  Since I don't want to be "that" girl/woman, I've done my best to purge myself of neurotic tendencies, but there is one area in which I am completely willing to look crazy, and that is when something directly relates to my health.

When I was in high school, I was known for my singing and I had every intention of always being known for my singing, so I was super-protective of my voice and all the parts of me that contributed to it.  The minute there was a little chill in the air, I was in a turtleneck and sweater and if, heaven forbid, someone was smoking near me or the air was really cold, I had no hesitation about pulling the turtleneck up over my mouth and nose to warm/filter the air around me.

Ever since I became a grown-up, and more importantly a vegetarian, it has been increasingly rare for me to fall ill.  When that happens, I usually do three things: sleep as much as possible, drink detox tea and eat nutrient-dense foods, and bundle up to excess.

So, before I left my home to teach today, I assembled the following outfit:
thigh-high knit socks under knee-high boots under an ankle-length skirt with an undershirt under a thermal shirt, topped with a scarf, my winter [wool] coat, with gloves.  I stepped out of the building and immediately noticed that I had overreacted a bit to a sunny, mid-50s day.  I comforted myself by remembering that I would return to pitch darkness and probably exactly 50 degrees, possibly less.  Even if the temperature didn't budge an inch, I had significantly fewer sniffles and sneezes today and I would prefer not to relapse tomorrow.

Dinner closely echoed my outfit overkill; in my excitement to include plenty of good-for-me fresh veggies in my soup, the broth was kind of like a second thought - there was very little point to its existence other than to puff out the bulgur and make me believe it was really soup.

Buckwheat Bulgur-Black Bean Soup from the October 2010 issue of Vegetarian Times magazine was as tasty as it is beautiful.  I really enjoy the color combination of the top three colors of the rainbow and I think the black beans do a great job bringing out their complementary but still contrasted colors.  The recipe said to shred the carrots, but I'm really not a fan of shredding carrots - it makes a mess that can really only be justified by carrot cake.  So, I julienned them with my favorite kitchen toy instead.  I don't think my mother knew just how helpful that bad boy would be, or how very much use he would get - I think she just thought it was cool.

Angst is apparently trying to put on his "winter weight," which means he's eating as though he'll never eat again...which was reinforced when he ran out of food before I had a chance to get him new food.  He spent most of his waking minutes today convinced he was starving to death.  Fortunately, I was aware of his plight and stopped by Superfresh on my way home to pick up his dinner.  While I was there, I thought a nice accompaniment to our soup dinner would be a nice loaf of artisan bread to dip in broth and/or the dipping sauce I wanted to share with Mister (as far as I'm concerned, that little $5 tin has already paid for itself).  Since it's autumn, Superfresh decided that all the bread should have raisins (Mister's arch-nemesis), but with a little spy-power, I was able to locate and snatch up one of two loaves of roasted garlic bread.  It went very nicely with both the dipping sauce and the soup.

I made a bit more tonight and between Mister's and my delight for the dipping sauce and Mister's proclivity toward using bread as a soup scoop, we made it through half the loaf tonight!  Maybe I'll skip the rice in our Moroccan Lentil Stew tomorrow and just let Mister use up the rest of the bread as lavash instead!