Michael's Quarantine Kitchen

I'm nearly free of my two weeks of quarantine!

One thing I'm excited about is having a variety of good food once I am out of my hotel lockdown. Being stuck in my tiny hotel room was ok; the aircon was cool and the bed was big and comfy. Sure I was bored, but at least I was able to do some work. The biggest annoyance was the lack of variety in my meals. I ate a lot of instant noodles. A LOT.

However, I leared during my months spent backpacking around Vietnam with my girlfriend how to make instant noodles and other non-perishable foods into quite a meal!

On my last day of quarantine, allow me to take you around my "quarantine kitchen" and show you some of the meals that I've been enjoying.

my "pantry"

I had gone to the store before my quarantine started and stocked up on some essentials. I got really into instant miso soup! I also had a lot of oatmeal, and sometimes I would add some frozen veggies and a dash of Maggi sauce to it to make it more savory.

savory oatmeal and miso soup

Speaking of miso soup, check out the package for the brand I bought. I just noticed that this company has been around since 1662! Isn't that wild? There are lots of really old companies in Japan, but a nearly 400 year-old miso company is amazing.

a package of instant miso soup

I often snacked on dried or fried fish and sometimes added the crispy fish into my noodles for a bit more protein and crunch. This flavor was one of my favorites. It was fried with chili and Thai basil!

crispy fried fish

Salted Egg Noodles:

Here is an example of how I made a slightly nicer meal out of a regular package of instant noodles. In this case, I found a package of salted egg flavored instant noodles, and wanted to jazz it up a bit.

preparing my ingredients

The noodles themselves are fine, but they need something else to make them a real meal and not just a snack. I started off by preparing the instant noodles in the normal way and adding the flavor paste and seasoning packet.

preparing my noodles

Luckily I travel with this handy collapsable water kettle, so I was able to boil water for tea, oatmeal, and noodles! It would have been hard to go two weeks without any hot meals!

waiting for the water to boil

I ended up adding frozen veggies and a boiled egg that I bought pre-packed from the local 7-11.

And there we have it! Meal #1!

salted egg noodles

Tom Yum Pla - Thai-style spicy noodles

Another example is Tom Yum (a very popular type of spicy soup in Thailand). I started out with a package of Mama brand instant tom yum noodles (widly regarded as Thailand's best instant noodle).

tom yum ingredients

For tom yum, I also added frozen veggies and a can of mackeral in tomato sauce. Tom yum soup is usually seved with shrimp or fish, so a little bit of seafood flavor made it taste a little more authentic.

dinner

So as you can see, I've had to be very creative! It's been ok, and some of the meals have actually been surprisingly good, but I'm getting really tired of it.

I've also had a lot of cereal, bread with peanut butter, and crackers.

I am so ready to have a real home cooked meal...

This quarantine can't end fast enough!