SALTY SOUP WITH NOODLES
My friend group has been passing around a cold, and it finally came to me. Although it’s not a bad cold, I’m sick enough that I find myself doing the things I usually do when I’m sick: drinking extra liquids, diffusing oils to help my sinuses, and putting extra lotion on my nose. But the primary way I know that I’m really sick is when I start craving comfort food. Specifically, salty soup with noodles.
My connection to eating salty soup with noodles when sick doesn’t make much sense to me. Yes, I ate canned soup growing up when I was ill, so there’s some nostalgia there. But there are many things I ate or drank when I was sick as a kid (I was sick a lot) that I don’t crave when I’m sick as an adult, like cranberry juice mixed with Sprite or lemon-lime Gatorade. I’m fine without those things, even when I have the flu.
I DREAM OF NOODLES
In contrast, my craving for salty soup with noodles is so strong that last night, I almost got out of bed to heat up a can of soup. It was well after midnight; I had to be up at 5:45 the next morning, yet I was just lying there thinking about soup. I suppose the heart wants what the heart wants, and mine wants broth.
The only thing that kept me from getting out of bed was the knowledge that we only had one can of soup in the house: chicken and wild rice. That was not going to cut it. I knew I’d be disappointed, so I stayed in my cozy bed and eventually fell asleep.
As I’ve grown older, my tastes have changed overall. For the past ten years or so, my favorite comfort food meal is pho. My former roommate, Holly, used to say that pho “has curative properties,” and I fully agree with her. I just feel better when I eat/drink it. I never had pho growing up—like most kids in Upstate New York, I didn’t even know what pho was. But now it’s what I crave whenever I come down with so much as a sniffle!
KEEP COMFORT FOOD COMFORTING
Now, I could dig into the science of why my body craves salty soup with noodles when I’m sick. But honestly, I think I’d rather leave it as a mystery. It’s kind of nice knowing that there’s something out there that will make me feel better, even if it doesn’t actually make me less sick, and I’d rather not accidentally learn that it’s bad for me or something. You know? Keep my comfort food comforting.
I’m curious: what’s your comfort food? And do you ever crave salty soup with noodles, or is that just me?
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