I recommend making soup

A balm for an uncertain world

An Instapot Wild Rice soup

Every time I get sick, Sean runs out, buys a chicken, and throws it in the Instapot. (Pro tip from Sean: include a sliver of ginger, a couple of cloves, and a bit of fennel in your stock. It imparts the most delicate floral notes. Try it!) It’s the most caring gesture, and in a couple of hours, a vaporous bowl of golden medicine is set before me. Instantly, I feel better. Maybe not all better, but better.

There’s no substitute for a homemade stock, but pho will work in a pinch— those stocks are very homemade and have been known to make me better, too. (My decades-long go-to is Pho 79 on Nicollet, and I’ll fight anyone who says I’m wrong about this.) As a person who also makes (or in a pinch, buys) soup for someone who is sick, I can say with confidence that this exercise is as much for me as it is for them.

When someone is sick, what can we do? We can’t make them better. At least, we can’t make them all better. But we can try. That’s what making soup is all about. It’s a human gesture towards: “Hey, I gotchu. I may not be able to make you all better, but I can sure as shit try.” I think we can do this towards the world in general, which as we all know is super sick. Will making a pot of soup fix the world? Maybe. Make a pot. Give some of the soup away. You’ve just made the world better. Not all better, but better.

The meditative rock of a blade through mirepoix, the crash of its side over cloves of garlic, smooshing them into smithereens, the soft bubble of the stockpot emanating the rich humidity of schmaltz through the atmosphere— all of these things are salves for our own worry, sadness, madness, angst. It is only by working through our sorrows that they will eventually be set behind us. If you’re going through hell, keep going, someone wiser than me has said.

It’s been a week for making soup. Lots of worries, big and small, the grey slate skies of January providing a backdrop to it all, someone wiser than me also said every day of January feels like a Monday.

Like lots of you, I have resolutions— someone very, very wise said leave your resolutions for spring, when the sun is shiny and the air is balmy— January is for hibernation. Perhaps I’ll try this next year. But since I’ve already resolved, there’s a bunch of to-dos and must-dos, and shoulds, and better-get-goings to be confronted with each morning. One day, when I was procrastinating against all of these, I came across this podcast which offered a helpful nugget— as an experiment, ask yourself what you would like to be doing in any given moment, instead of asking yourself what you should be doing. You might be surprised into finding that you’ll actually do what you’re supposed to be doing, or if nothing else, those things will still ultimately, eventually get done. I’m running this little experiment over here at Chez Shamecca, and so far it’s working out nicely.

And so yesterday, I found that I wanted to make a bunch of soup. I’ll give most of it away, but we ate some for dinner too, simply in front of the fire with crusty bread and salad and red wine and lots of butter. Simple, yet decadent. Nice and easy. It’s the thing I wanted to do, and it was the thing that needed doing.

All I’m trying to say is nothing bad will happen if you put a chicken in the Instapot, or really any ordinary pot, and start chopping. Don’t forget the all-important step of giving some of what you’ve made away. You might not feel all better, but you will feel better, and you’ll be warm in the knowledge that you’ve just made the world a better place.