Love Soup
I’d like to think of myself as a Lipton noodle soup fan, victim, and connoisseur. I can’t remember when its little red box first came out of a grocery bag. I can’t remember my first slurp of broth, or the first sensation of comfort from the liquid sliding down my throat then sitting softly in my stomach. What I do remember, however, is who was making it for me, who sat down next to me to enjoy its limited ingredients yet pungent smack. So, the connection my brain is making when I decide to rip open some soup for dinner is directly related to who loves me. It’s my love soup.
When you love something, it can hurt you. Unfortunately for my cousin, there was a literal instance of a burned forearm (and wasted soup) when my grandma was hurriedly pouring out bowls for each of us on a sunny afternoon 15 years ago. A story that my family isn’t afraid to reminisce upon, especially since her passing. We usually welcome the recounting of a failed fix-it project or homely mistake, like when my dad removed the sound capabilities off our home computer somehow. It keeps us humble. There then came a point in my childhood where my doctor recommended me to take a long break from Lipton on account of high blood pressure. An obstacle I was unprepared for, basically removing one of my core food groups at the time. But a small break could never deter the palette I have been creating since birth.
Despite the visible downsides, my family has been nothing but supportive of my salty dependency. If my grandma picked me up from school, Lipton soup was on the menu for lunch. My parents go-to solution for days when I rejected their own dinner creation: breaking out the soup. Even through my short-lived phase of only drinking the broth; where they would hunch over the counter, picking out the brittle noodle flakes from the bag before boiling the water. My memere fosters her French-Canadian roots by serving rich desserts and hearty pastas, but always keeps at least 2 boxes in her pantry to this day just in case the craving for soup strikes me during a visit, which it certainly does.
After 4 years of living in a city with wildly diverse food options and changing my diet to a vegetarian lifestyle, there’s been some deviation from the soup in my dinner schedules. But in my pantry as I’m writing this, I can guarantee there to be a box waiting for me. Not only do the boxes sell for less than $2 still, but the lack of chicken acts in my favor now too. The first three ingredients being wheat flour, maltodextrin (more wheat), and salt, I wouldn’t expect anyone to be ecstatic about trying this powdered dish from a box. But the smell alone is enough to entice me into being in a soup mood.
When its cooking, the air smells salty, but not like the sea. The kind of salt you can salivate over and lick from your lips before anything gets to your mouth. A murky yellow elixir swirls around in the pot, and the powder that catches on the sides is lethargically scraped and mixed back inside. I would impatiently sit with an empty bowl, inscribed with my name, and used for this purpose only. Then a hefty portion of noodles and broth are ladled into the bowl, with an ice cube to cool and garnish. I make little effort to blow on my spoon, as the simmering dish’s flavor enhances from the heat. But I assure you, it can be gulped down after growing cold in a discarded pot on the stove as well.
