I made soup all over my cubicle!

I got up late and hungover. I blame our local bar, McMurphy's! They do $1 pints/$4 pitchers of domestics every Friday and it's only 3 blocks from our place. Man, I just love beer. My poor Mikey is still drunk. When I got up, I was ravenous and knew I needed something warm and nourishing and soothing and cheap. So I took a ziploc bag and in to it went all the ingredients for:

Cubicle soup, option 1

3 tablespoons tomato paste

1 ounce (I think) whole wheat spaghetti

3 whole mushrooms

dash of liquid smoke

2 large handfuls of mustard greens

Sriracha

black pepper

When I got to work, I dumped the bag in to a large ceramic bowl which holds about 4 cups of liquid--added 3 cups water. It's really important that you use a large ceramic bowl because it is large enough that if you only partially fill it, it will contain everything without spilling over. Also, it will not melt like Tuppers. Plus, I truly believe that heating plastics in the microwave releases noxious chemicals.

Microwave about 15 minutes--make sure the pasta is submerged in the water. No need to stir, just let it cook away. You get a delicious, filling, healthy soup. Add sriracha, pepper and salt to taste.

This was super filling and cost less than a quarter. Only thing missing would be a bit of protein--I'm thinking kidney beans or lentils. Yum.

A few reasons why doing this is great:

• Canned soup is good and convenient but super high in sodium.
• Canned soup is canned. It's not fresh.
• Canned soup is canned. Packaging waste.
• Canned soup, especially vegan, can be expensive.
• Ready-made hot soup is VERY expensive.
• This only took 16.27 minutes and it would have taken way longer to drive to a restaurant and pick something up, plus, if I had a car, there is the whole gas expense.

TIP for the considerate: since you'll be hogging the microwave for about 15 minutes, try to make your soup at an off-peak time. You can just add a little more water later and heat it up.