Good Soup

A love-letter to the leftovers I promise I`ll finish tonight.

Soup for dinner, again. Day three soup, to be specific. The flavors have all merged, and the starchy beans and potatoes have absorbed enough of the broth to create a stew-like consistency. It's hot and filling and only takes 2-3 minutes to warm up in the microwave. While I can't say I ever love leftovers, I will happily eat this final bowl before dealing with the panic of what to eat for dinner again tomorrow. 

Soup of the day.

This particular soup is extra special because it's my favorite: crisper-box soup. You know, the crisper box…the place where beautiful fresh produce goes to slowly rot in an agonizing, cold death. Moldy lemons, bags of bendy carrots, dried-out onion halves you really did have plans for, and browning lettuce that has secreted juices that should really stay inside the leaves - hopefully not all at once, but I won't judge. Don't lie to yourself. I know you know what I'm talking about. The crisper box: friend to the culinary adventurous and enemy to everyone who suffers object-permanence problems. Unfortunately, I fall into both categories.

I can partially blame the weather, as usual. As I have established in previous posts, the homes in Japan are not as insulated as those in the US. When it is humid and hot outside, it is humid and hot inside too. When it is cold and damp outside, you guessed it, it's also cold and damp inside. The key here is the humidity. It fluffs my hair, threatens my bathroom with the promise of mold, and rots my produce faster than I can remember to eat it. On top of this (because, of course, it gets worse), my fridge has the mood swings of an acne-ridden thirteen-year-old. One day, it will show up for me, circulating the air and keeping things nice, but the next day, it might freeze my yogurts or (worst of all) stop cooling altogether. I have tried all the tricks, but the poor thing is on its last leg, dying slowly like the carrots. 

My inability to keep produce fresh has brought me to crisper-box soup. It's the perfect way to use any last bits of root, stalk, and leaf before they go bad. It fills my dinner bowl for at least a few nights and never requires a recipe. Triple-win! 

My soup has another benefit, too: it's comfortable. 

I made a concerted effort to adjust my palette to Japanese foods in the year or two before moving to Japan. I visited local ramen shops, learned to make onigiri by hand, and shopped for ingredients at my local Japanese market whenever possible. While my efforts helped me feel more knowledgeable and prepared for the foods I would eat here, they didn't prepare me for the shame of walking into my local Friend Mart (grocery store) and having to google translate the labels of nearly everything I bought. They also didn't prepare me for the lack of international options or what I would have considered base ingredients like cans of beans or blocks of cheese. It's not that these Western foods are totally unavailable, but if I want them, I have to be willing to pay more, travel further, and risk quality. Don't get me wrong, I am not complaining. I love that I have been thrown into Japanese cuisine, and the lack of familiarity is part of the excitement of moving. But I am out of luck when I only want an easy quesadilla with a pile of salsa after a long day.

Soup, though, is always doable. I boil potatoes, chopped carrots or peppers, onion, and whatever greens I have on hand in a broth of water and bullion, and that's it. I can add a hunk of bread with a slice of my precious cheese from the international store to make it extra cozy. If I turn off the lamps and light a candle, I feel just like Bilbo Baggins having his supper in the peace of his hobbit hole. Nothing could be better. 

Actually, soup has never been a proper comfort food for me. I only made it sometimes back in America, and it lacks the nostalgia of other foods I grew up on. Even so, soup is undeniably comforting. There is a reason why Adam Driver's character is eating soup in that often-quoted scene of Girls when he and Lena Dunham's character have a heart-wrenching conversation. "Good soup," he says flatly. The world has fallen from under him, but the soup is excellent and warm and might be the only thing he can feel. Nothing is left to say but to comment on the food and try to move ahead. 

On days when I feel a little like Adam Driver in this scene, when the miles between home and me feel extra far, or when my energy has been fully drained by the very loud voices of very little children, it's soup that I go to. I can at least muster the energy to stand in my kitchen for twenty minutes while I chop veggies, mix them into the broth, and watch it boil. And when that first spoonful hits my tongue, I feel more myself. I have cooked something. I have accomplished something. I will watch twenty minutes of Bee and Puppcat, my ultimate comfort show, and I will go to bed full and nourished. Tomorrow will be better, and it's all thanks to soup.

More proof of my growing soup addiction - crisper-box soups that got me though the winter. Ingredients vary, but the outcome of a happier me is always the same.

I could write an entire newsletter series on food — maybe my next career?  Food is not simply something I must consume to survive. I live for food. Each meal is its own short story, complete with inspiration, character development, and plot complexity. Today, crisper-box soup may be a funny anecdote, but I feel it will grow into a meal that represents a time of change, the challenges I am facing, and the intention I have in caring for myself. It's finally becoming a proper comfort food with its own nostalgia attached. All this in a bowl of soup. This, and I get to rescue my vegetables from purgatory.

Thanks for reading this week's newsletter! I'd love to hear about your comfort foods or your equivalent of crisper-box soup. Maybe yours is a pasta, salad, or stir-fry. Whatever it is, what's the story? Drop a comment or send me a message! Until next time, cheers, and remember to check the bottom of your fridge!

Ending Notes

Listening To: Speaking of comfort foods, I have a comforting album to recommend, and a new one at that! Sometimes, I hesitate to recommend full albums here since they require time and attention to really listen to and judge. However, running at only 27 minutes, I don't hesitate to recommend Here in the Pitch, Jessica Pratt's fourth studio album that dropped May 3rd. Her music is folky but not in a fiddles and rye whisky way.  It sounds like soft folk from the 60s playing over a gray morning, a solitary walk in the park, or those late hours after dark when the world is quiet. Think Joni Mitchell. Her voice has the same ring as the echo after the pluck of an acoustic guitar. It is haunting, satisfying, and beautiful. This new album is so intimate, almost too intimate. I feel like I am intruding on her private musings while also knowing they are secretly shared with me alone. It's wonderful. If you can find 27 minutes in your week, I hope you spend it on Here in the Pitch. 

Recent Eats: I wish I had a photo, but I was too excited to take one. Last week, I was craving mac and cheese, which is not easy to come by here. So, instead, I settled for a creamy gochujang pasta. The sauce was made with sautéed garlic and onion in butter and olive oil (off to a heavenly start), a heaping spoonful of gochujang (a spicy Korean red chili paste), heavy cream, and a little grated Parmesan. I simmered everything so the cheese would mix nicely into the sauce before adding a spoonful of pasta water and my chosen noodles. I used some cute car-shaped pasta I found at an international market this time. It wasn't the boxed Kraft mac and cheese with SpongeBob pasta I was craving, but it was spicy, creamy, and pretty good! Thank you, TikTok, for the idea!