Sunday, February 12, 2017

Hello, again. And kimchi soup.

Tonight I decided to log onto blogger and see if I could think of anything to write. I'm going through the transformative experience known as motherhood and sometimes that can be isolating. It made me think about how blogging used to be a lifeline to the outside world when, for quite different reasons, I found myself feeling that way.

Instead of writing an entirely new post I decided to publish a draft that I found here, written under a similar impulse a year ago when I was pregnant. I still make this kimchi soup though I've upgraded the phone.
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I've had this space for years and posted a few times, always deleting what I wrote soon after. I've been tripped up by the idea of writing a blog for a long time. I don't want to craft beautiful still life images or write romantic prose about my feelings about potatoes. I don't even want to pick up a camera most of the time, preferring to use my janky, out-of-date iPhone. And mostly, the internet is so saturated with beautiful blogs, I felt sure that no one would read mine. And then I decided I don't care.
My workspace isn't sexy or covered in moss.
I went through an identity crisis recently, wondering what I've been doing with myself. I spent most of my twenties responsibly paying for the ungodly expensive education that I'm not using (directly, anyway) and going to therapy every two weeks, untangling my brain about my fraught but not-in-a-memoir-kind-of-way childhood. Meanwhile I watched friends get higher degrees or open businesses or have dozens of pink babies but no matter where I tried to branch out, I always found myself in the wrong place and so unhappy. The one thing I did discover during that time is that for me, good work is its own reward. I like to have enough money to buy the nice olive oil and for occasional plane tickets, but beyond that, I don't actually enjoy achievement outside the realm of self-mastery. It's deeply satisfying to me to finish a challenging task I've started, but so far trying to get anyone else's approval for my efforts has left me cold and shelling out for extra therapy sessions.

In any case, a few months ago my husband and I took a long-awaited trip to Europe and when we got home a month later I was bursting at the seams to change everything about my life. As it turned out, that was mostly a nesting instinct because I was--am--pregnant. It took a little while to start doing something with it (there was a prolonged stretch of sleeping 16 hours a day and watching daytime television) but that good, creative juju has spilled over into wanting to write again, and to share the small domestic moments in my life that I find so deeply fulfilling to experience and read about. I love other people's grocery lists, for example. Something to do with seeing their plans for the week in list-form--the pasta and the roast chicken--is magnificently comforting and normal. I really like normal.

Anyway, enough prologue. I've had spicy food on the brain thanks to a ridiculous pregnancy book I recently tried and failed to read that instructed me to eat for my dosha and do reflexology as often as possible. The one suggestion contained therein which I found palatable--well besides all the massages I'm supposed to be getting in my imaginary life as Gwyneth Paltrow--was to double up on all foods with heat. I can always manage that.

Last night I went to bed feeling like I was coming down with something and woke up with a vague memory of a Food52 recipe for kimchi soup on the brain. Sadly I discovered that I only had a little bit of kimchi left in the fridge. Grrr. I make it myself and I've been falling down on the job. This jar is leftover from a batch I made last summer. Cold kimchi seemed unsuitable for a morning of steady snowfall so I decided to wing it, remembering something Gabrielle Hamilton once said about her cure for a cold being a bouillon cube mixed with boiling water, drunk straight.

The result is barely a recipe but made such a restorative breakfast--yep, breakfast. But then I eat salads for breakfast sometimes so you may not want to listen to me. But do make it, if you like kimchi. It will soothe your soul and cure your oncoming cold, probably.


Instant Kimchi Soup

  • 1/2 bouillon cube (I usually have Rapunzel brand in the cabinet but this morning I had Gabrielle's bouillon of choice, Knorr)
  • 1/3 c. kimchi, vegetables and juice (I make my own but for store-bought I like Sunja's)
  • boiling water
Add the kimchi and bouillon to a mug and top with boiling water. Wait one minute, then stir. Drink.