The Poor Mouth

Alphabet Soup vs. 김치 찌개

PART FROM THE OCCASIONAL bout of near-fatal food poisoning, I don’t think I got sick even once during my California sojourn. (It was two years, but we’ll call it a sojourn.) Perhaps it was the prophylactic weather, or the citrus-based cocktails, or some chemical property of the Dungeness crab, which I ate whenever an opportunity presented itself. All I know is that the East Coast is a very different story. We are passing from the rainy season into the season of low light, sleet, and suicidal ideation. There is only one thing for it, and that is soup.

For reasons which need not concern you, reader, I recently had good reason to believe I was coming down with strep throat. I prescribed myself two cans per day of Campbell’s Vegetable Soup (Beef Stock) with alphabet-shaped pasta, but each day the tickling in my gullet became less playful and more sadistic. I had lost my faith in western medicine. It was time to try a more exotic remedy—from the inscrutable Orient. Years ago, in Manhattan’s Chinatown, I had known a salty half-Irish, half-Korean bartender called S— Kim. It was she who ordered me my first ever plastic tub of 김치 찌개, or kimchi jjigae.

Kimchi, of course, is Korean pickled cabbage. Some believe it has special terrific health benefits, though it has in fact been linked more soundly to stomach cancer. Either way, it has a spicy, salty tang and is best consumed—this judgment being based on a near-total ignorance of Korean cuisine—in the form of jjigae, or stew. I decided to try my hand at this mysterious soup, and with luck I would establish a DMZ of sorts between myself and the approaching misery.

The preparation is so simple that I ended up with something edible despite using the vaguest (sorry, most “enigmatic”) recipe the Internet had to offer. “I’m sure everyone has their own version of kimchi jjigae,” it begins, “but I thought I would share my version anyhow.” (Baby, don’t be shy: Redundancy plus opacity is what the Internet is all about. This site is a case in point.) I submit the recipe for your use, with two caveats. The first is that if you cook this for anywhere near as long as 45 minutes, you will need to add way more than “a little” water. The second is that whatever sam gyup sal might be, it definitely isn’t “pork bacon.”

Now, some good news. This stuff is magic, and my throat is right as rain. Alas (kiss your appetite goodbye), it does absolutely nothing for piles.

Kicked to the Curb

HAT HAPPENED? I announce my brand new “weblog,” treat you to one mediocre post, and then what? Starve to death? Swallow drain cleaner? Get a day job? Get bored of the whole enterprise? Quite to the contrary, everything is just fine, and I’ve been eating like a king, albeit a modest king. King of the Carnies, from the looks of all the hot dogs and hot-dog-like items and fried dough I’ve been consuming lately. But allow me to explain my temporary absence. I got evicted.

That’s not an eviction notice, of course; that’s just the building permit that says my erstwhile residence is not, in fact, a residence. There seems to have been some confusion about this among my readers, but when I said I live in a studio, I didn’t mean a studio apartment. (Actually, what I said was “non-residential studio space,” so I can only assume that my readers, all three of them, are illiterate.) Please note the paint and brushes. This is not, as the landlady gently but firmly reminded us, “a place for sleeping in.” There was no hope of continuing to unfurl my bedroll on the sly, as the landlady’s hawk-eyed and dolphin-eared son was living in the upstairs apartment, which, while zoned residential, is probably not licensed for whatever sort of opium parlor or house of burlesque he seemed to be operating there. The bottom line is that I went quietly, so as not to get my mom (the tenant) in trouble, and now I am back to living in the “Green Goblin,” my trusty 1999 Ford Contour. But before I set about chronicling our late adventures together, the Goblin and I, I’d like to say a few words about the one meal I actually ate while living in the studio.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, it was a can of Campbell’s Chicken Noodle Soup. And my thoughts about this can of soup are as follows. It is simple and delicious, especially with a few dashes of Tabasco. When you’re a little kid and home sick, or coming in from a day of sledding, or some insufferable “Calvin and Hobbes” crap of that nature, it’s just the ticket. But when you are rounding thirty years old, semi-employed, and what little you own is in the trunk of a car whose brakes are about to go, do not eat this soup. Every watery bite will make you feel like the fingerless-gloves-wearing hobo you are on your way to becoming. And I should clarify that while this was the one meal I ate in the studio, it is not a meal I ate only once. It’s easier than you think to get into the habit of eating a can of soup for every meal, perhaps with a side of Andy Capp’s® Oven Baked Hot Fries. Remember, dear readers, you’re only as poor as your food tastes.