Would my soup baby be a delicious umami angel, or a revolting demon that tasted of sweaty, burnt feet?
Hello Dear Reader! Normally People Eating Together posts at Late to the Theater discuss that age old tradition of cannibalism, but today we’re going to discuss cooking. RAMEN cooking, to be precise! So grab a snack or a drink and settle in for a long, rambling ramen-ing kind of time as a novice takes on a classic of Japanese cookery. Note: this recipe is an amalgam of methods taught by Adam Liaw and Joshua Weissman. Please watch their videos to learn properly! Also, I’m not being paid by anyone to write this post. All opinions expressed are my own.
This, too, can be all yours for the low, low price of 24 hours of labor!
Being American (from Florida, no less), anything over the age of a hundred impresses me. I was Home.
In 2018, Jen took her first ever trip outside the United States. She was lazy and never posted the rest of the trip, but it kind of worked out because she hit the mental wall recently and needed an escape, and figured that you do too. Please enjoy Part Three of this multi-part series chronicling her tale abroad, along with the requisite musings. Part One can be found here. Part Two can be found here.
Note: The internet is full of posts by smart, photogenic people taking meticulously staged selfies at famous landmarks, so this travelogue is restricted to actual personal thoughts, including things I found fascinating and/or hilarious and VERY OCCASIONAL selfies. This entry contains terrifying staircases, clotted cream on scones, a tiny castle on an island, and the End of the World!
How to Get Lost, Found, and Fed
The next leg of my trip took me from Oxford aaaaaalllll the way down Cornwall to Penzance. But first, I had to get lost in Puxton.
Like, REALLY lost. The red dot is Puxton.
Leaving Oxford was hard – not just because I loved my Airbnb either. No, the reason it was so difficult was because I was undergoing HORRIFIC MENSTRUAL CRAMPING. Naturally, this made driving even more of a chore than the whole ‘left side with roundabouts’ thing.
Things are not alive. They don’t have meaning other than that which an individual imbues in them. Things are myriad and ultimately worthless to others but priceless to their owners: A 20-year-old band T-shirt that looks more like a fishnet these days; a favorite cooking pot; a piece of shit lawn mower that should have been replaced years ago but whose quirks are known and familiar; a tiny car that zips between tractor trailers on wet highways but always brings its driver home safe.
Everyone was sitting outside on the patio as if it was Tuesday, June 9th 2019 instead of Tuesday, June 9th 2020. Imagine my shock at realizing that if we ignore a deadly disease, it just goes away.
Join me, won’t you, on a strange little journey that functions as a peculiar microcosm of everything going on right now.
So I eat bread sometimes. Not often, because carbs and blood sugar and blah blah blah, but once in a great while I get an Urge.
Lately, meaning in the time of COVID-19, I have been listening to my Urges. This is because Urges represent bright flashes of effervescent excitement in what has otherwise become a slog through a gray, repetitive world. Urges are a sign that I’m alive.
