Cucs, coughs, and soups. Oh my!

Update: my voice not only sounds low, it also sounds phlegm-y.

Yum.

Let's back up a little bit. A couple of days ago, I mentioned a crazy cucumber recipe that I was planning on sharing. Sometimes, my experiments fail. What I can say for this one is that it turned out quite pretty looking.

Cucumber-strawberry lemonade!!

It was too sour and not sweet enough. That might have been because I only used three strawberries and no sweetener. The texture was pretty awesome though, and the foam on top was a nice little bonus!

In other updates, I woke up this morning with a horrible, uncontrollable cough. I've mentioned how I hate taking medicine. (If not, now you know). I'm not that extreme in that I won't take anti-inflammatory if I have a fever and have to finish writing my Master's report that's due the same day.

#Mylifetwodaysago.

But when it comes to a cough, I'd rather not take cough syrup, because not only does it taste bad, but to me, it's unnecessary. So I did some research and found that (along with honey) some breathing techniques can be used to subside a cough. Strangely, it worked.

It could be psychological. All I know is that I do not need cough syrup or cough drops. #Score.

Where I was going with this is that I wanted something smooth, hot, and delicious to eat for lunch to subside my throat that had become coarse from coughing so much.

Doesn't it just look healthy?! The soup was a slight modification of the creamy vegetable soup (made by Mario in Costa Rica--if you haven't seen that post, it's worth your while to see it!) and the eat your veggies soup. I used carrot, tomato, garlic, cilantro, turmeric, spinach, and peas in my soup today.

To finish off cucumber week, I made cucumber raita. It's a refreshing snack, perfect for a warm day.

Ingredients:

• 1 cup yogurt
• 1/3 cucumber, peeled and chopped
• 1 teaspoon mustard seeds
• 1 teaspoon cumin seeds
• salt/pepper to taste
• cilantro for garnish

In a small pan, toast the cumin and mustard seeds over medium-high heat. The cumin seeds will brown and the mustard seeds will start to pop.

In a bowl, combine the yogurt and cucumber.

Add the toasted seeds.

Season with salt and pepper and garnish with cilantro.

I like this plain. Or you could eat this with a chappati to make for a more authentic Indian dish. :)

Later this evening, April and I went to Choice Greens for dinner. I really like this place because you can customize your salad to your liking! There are way too many choices--both for veggies and dressings. We both stared at the menu card for at least 10 minutes before making our decisions.

My salad:

Spinach + kalamata olives + artichoke + beets + chickpeas + jicama + cilantro dressing.

Even though that salad looks small, it was quite filling. And it included beets. What is there not to like?

See you tomorrow! (Any recipe/vegetable of the week requests?)