The Decemberest

Above: Ariana Grande inspires us all from every direction.

Friends,

Today is the beginning of finals week. Every semester around this time I feel like the semester didn’t go as well as I wanted, that I didn’t get the engagement I was hoping for, etc. etc. The difference is that now I’ve experienced it enough times to know that the feeling is normal, and that in a month or two I’ll get an email or have a short conversation that makes me realize it went okay.

I’m in a stock-making mood lately. As a mostly vegetarian, I used to get questions about steak and bacon a lot. As in, “I don’t know if I could live without bacon, how do you do it?” or “Don’t you just need a steak every now and then?” I’m not sure if the culture at large has shifted away from that reaction or if I’ve just stopped being around the kind of people who ask questions like that, but I remember whenever I got that question I always thought, no, I don’t really miss having steak. Instead, the meat I missed most was seafood: sushi or steamed mussels or a bouillabaisse-type dish. I think my answer to that question, what animal product do I miss most?, is shifting now, making a slide to STOCK. Yes, it’s true, you can make good vegetable stock. This veg pho recipe substitutes the lack of meat flavor with additional spices and it is very good. If you sub out the beef for mushrooms in this Taiwanese beef noodle recipe , it’s still fantastic. Kombu, that magical dried kelp, adds an important umami/glutamic layer to broths and goes with just about any flavor. Same for miso, though wait until the soup is finished cooking to stir it in. But vegetable broth just cannot achieve the same level that a collagen-rich stock provides.

Bryan Washington, a Houstonian, is probably the essayist I look forward to reading the most lately. Just today, he published an essay in Hazlitt entitled “ The Year in Broth ,” which is a beautiful reflection on the sustenance that broth offers. One of my all-time favorite poems metaphorizes stock, comparing the distillation of it to artistry or life or what’s the difference, really. It’s Thomas Lux’s “Render, Render.” Read it , or, preferably, watch the animated version from MotionPoems . When an anthology was put together with stories about food, magical food writer Aimee Bender chose to anchor her piece in stone soup, because of course she did.

There is a reason it is chicken soup for the soul, is there not?

The trick about stock is that it is slow. The collagen in bones (and you have to use bones, for the love of all things holy, do not bother making a meat-based stock without any bones) (shrimp shells count as bones but have no collagen so) melts at a low temperature — 160 degrees — but it melts slowly slowly, you have to be patient, you have to be willing to endure the pot of goodness making your whole house smell like warmth and comfort for hours on end without enjoying the fruits of your labor. Throw in some carrots and parsley and a new onion and that kind of sad looking half a red onion and hey, don’t you have a leek leftover from last weekend that needs to be used? Throw it in. Don’t forget the kombu. Don’t forget the MSG. Don’t forget the salt, a whole whole lot of salt. Embrace the salt. Watch Samin Nosrat’s Salt Fat Acid Heat on Netflix and realize you have never used enough salt in your entire life. Then, as you serve yourself a mug, think back to the yoga class where you always started with a breathing exercise that had you imagine breathing in the good air and the air spreading out to your entire body, to your fingertips and toes. You were never good at those breathing exercises, never could get past knowing the mechanics of your lungs. But where air failed, your first sip of stock can succeed, you can see the stock just below the skin, warming your extremities and revitalizing your cells and clearing your pores too, probably.

But, PS, I still don’t know the exact difference between broth, stock, consommé, and bouillon, nor am I ever going to learn.

Further reading:

• The best piece of radio I’ve listened to lately is Anna Sale interviewing Fault in our Stars author John Green .
• A food critic declares a Portland burger joint to have the best burger in the country, then laments the fact that his label overwhelmed the restaurant causing it to close down. But wait, actually that’s probably incorrect .
• Super thorough article exploring why young people are having less sex: “Despite the easing of taboos and the rise of hookup apps, Americans are in the midst of a sex recession.”
• Ever think about the financial costs of those statues? “In the last decade alone, American taxpayers have spent at least $40 million on Confederate monuments and groups that perpetuate racist ideology.” Solidarity with my colleagues at UNC .
• This month in random celebrities tweeting good stuff about video games: Zelda Williams .

Next month will be my 2018 recap, and who knows what I’ll want to recommend. Pop Culture Happy Hour had a Christmas Song episode , which taught me that a) there was a Bright Eyes Christmas album I somehow am just now learning about ? and b) Tyler, the Creator did a good job with the new Grinch songs . “Carol of the Bells” is my favorite Christmas song overall, probably due to Home Alone . Sufjan Stevens (relaxing/melancholy) and Kacey Musgraves (fun) have the best Christmas albums for this year. And, I can’t leave without sharing the magic and wonder that is Bob Dylan’s “Must Be Santa” music video .

From mine to yours,

-g