I Am The Mill: For The Love Of Soup

A while back, I wrote about my love affair with ramen. That super-salty, noodle-laden food of the gods. Not too hard to find a good bowl of authentic Japanese ramen in the big city. But outside of New York, let's say in Forksville, PA or Comanche, MT, you may not be so fortunate. However, you're not entirely out of luck if you don't live in the Big Apple, but still want a warm, mostly liquefied meal - perhaps with some pasta, vegetables, and/or pieces of meat. You see, there's this thing called "SOUP", and it's pretty damn mouthwatering too.

I've rarely met a soup I didn't like. Or at least didn't eat. There are a couple main reasons for this:

Number one, soup is the perfect vehicle for salt. And I love salt. You really have no way of comprehending how much salt can be added to soup until you try. It just keeps dissolving and dissolving. One handful, two handfuls. Maybe even three. Keep stirring. And add another handful. You'll be amazed to see it disappear into the broth. Recently, results of several medical studies have found that excessive sodium consumption may be harmful to many of your organs. I don't give a shit. There's no way I'm cutting salty soups out of my diet. I don't smoke. I don't do drugs. But I do do soup. And until it's made illegal, I'm gonna keep eating it with gusto - the year 2024 is my best guess, under co-Presidents Arnold Schwarzenegger and David Beckham. But a lot of changes will need to take place between now and then for my prediction to come to fruition. Plenty of fodder for another post.

Future Co-Presidents Schwarzenegger and Beckham will look to outlaw bad hair, ass flab, and soup.

Reason #2, soup is so easy to eat. Physically. Think about it - soup creates almost no pressure on your jaw, teeth, or skull. You don't have to chew, and you barely have to invoke involuntary peristalsis. Gravity does most of the work to get soup into your stomach. So it's the perfect food for the aged, infirm, invalid, and boundlessly lazy. Most people fall into at least one of these groups.

Another great thing about soup is that you can make almost anything into soup. Or any combination of things into soup. It's the most versatile food in the world. So long as the soup is composed mainly of edible items, then you're good to go. It doesn't even have to be hot, or salty, or nourishing. You could make a cold soup out of table sugar, pulverized Froot Loops, and Mrs. Butterworth's, and it still has to be considered a member of the highly respected soup family. To paraphrase the dictionary, soup is simply:

"a liquid...food....with....various added ingredients."

So according to God, or Moses, or whoever wrote the dictionary, soup is basically just any kind of liquid grub. And thou shalt honor it and eat it, and shalt not spilleth upon thyself, lest thou waste a precious drop of thine holy soup (Leviticus 36:25:34).