By Nate Smith
An odd coincidence, but my scheduled column today falls on a special day every year — my birthday.
I am 32 years old today and it also not just the anniversary of my birth, it marks two other special occasions.
The first comes from 2002, when I first landed in Asia. If you know me or read my columns from time to time, I talk ad nauseum about my years in Korea. I don’t know why, I guess its because of the good stories and friends that I made there. So, if you want some Korea stories, e-mail me sometime.
Today actually starts another very important event in my year. It’s not something as earth shattering as the State of the Union or as talked about as a basketball program, but it is something that almost makes sense.
Today, I, Nate Smith, boycott soup.
“Soup? Why? What did soup ever do to you?”
These are the questions you may be asking, but let me explain how the annual Nate Smith Soup Boycott came to be.
A few years ago, I was back living with my parents and it seemed like every week, my family was making some kind of soup. Mostly it was vegetable and for about three weeks, I had nothing but vegetable soup from my house and Allison’s, my then wife-to-be, house.
One day, around my birthday, I come in for my dinner break from work and I see that once again, vegetable soup was the main course for dinner.
I snapped. I started flailing about and yelling: “I hate soup!” “I’m done! That’s it! No more soup!”
I think I made myself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and headed out the door. I think I ate a lot of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches that winter.
But for about three years now, I get to a point where I just hate soup and at other times throughout the year, I am not a big soup hater. At other times, I eat soups, stews, consommes, broths and other soup-like dishes with no issues.
There is one exception to the soup boycott, chili. I will eat chili, when available, one time a week during the boycott. I don’t think chili is a soup or even a stew. You never go to a chili cook-off and see anyone saying its a soup. So, chili is not soup. Also, several Indian and Thai dishes, like curries, don’t go into the soup boycott. Like before, you never go to a curry cook-off... You get my point.
But chicken and dumplings is, to me, soup-like and I tend to avoid it during my boycott. I think it has something to do with broth.
The boycott usually ends around mid-spring, when I just might reach for a tasty cream of broccoli or a nice French onion.
I have wondered for a while why I started my mid-winter boycott of soup. I think it has to do with winter. I could be redirecting a sort-of cabin fever towards soup. But I know it’s close when my Mom and my wife get their large, impossible-to-wash soup pots out and trade recipes from the “Taste of Home” issue that has nothing but different kinds of soup on the cover.
That’s when I start reaching for the bread, the peanut butter and jelly. (Grape only. Strawberry is red, too close to tomato soup.)
Nate Smith may boycott soup starting today, but he will never boycott cake, especially one with whipped frosting.
E-mail him at nsmith@washtimesherald.com. Please, no soup recipes.
