Easy Miso Soup
From: Moon Cloud, Connecticut, USA

I love Miso soup for breakfast, but needed something easy because my time is tight, and I am sleepy in the morning.

• 1 big strip konbu (kombu) sea vegetable, wiped clean measures approx 5" x 7"
  
• 2 garlic cloves, peeled but not mashed
  
• 4 little slices ginger not mashed each measure approx 1" round and 1/4" thick
  
• 1/2 gallon water
  
• 1 tub white (shiro) miso paste (keep refrigerated)
  
• A little bag of wakame seaweed shreds

Fill a medium sized pot with the half gallon water. Use the smallest pot possible to slow evaporation.
Place in the peeled garlic, sliced ginger, and cleaned konbu.
Leave them undisturbed, neither refrigerated nor heated for at least three hours or up to 24 hours.
Place the pot with the vegetables still in on the heat, and bring only to a boil.
Remove the heat within two minutes of the boil.
Allow the mixture to cool, and remove the vegetables.
Store the clear broth in the refrigerator.

To make a single serving, fill a mug with the clear broth and heat in a microwave, or in a small pot on the stove.
Sprinkle in a tiny pinch of wakame shreds (be careful, they grow), and place a small tea strainer across the cup, so it dips into the water.
Put one or two teaspoons miso shiro into the strainer and stir with a small spoon to dissolve it and push through strainer.
Sip as you would a "cup of soup".

I only have to make the "dashi" (broth) twice a week, and then just reheat it in the mornings. New people should use small amounts of wakame and miso at first then increase to suit your taste. For more substance, add shredded carrot, diced scallion, whatever you like just before reheating.
*special happy note* 1 pot, 1 strainer and 1 mug to wash only.