As the weather gets colder, we’d needed, the warmer varieties of foods, and, soup is a GREAT choice during this season, translated…
I saw the stir-fried dumplings made by my Polish friend who’d lived in China before, and she’d stated, that “this is the BEST weapon to defend against the cold weather”, then, it’d, dawned on me, “Oh, wow, the winter is here now”. I’d written a private message to a Taiwanese friend who’s studying in Poland, asked her about the weather, she’d said, “sometimes, it’d dropped to below zero, sometimes, rising above zero………very unstable, and, two weeks ago, it’d rained and snowed, the ENTIRE week too!”
we have the richer variety here, not my photograph…
This sort of a conversation once occurred between my mother and I. Every time I’d heard her complaining on, “The temperatures dropped to in the teens in Taiwan, it’s so cold now”, I’d often laughed, “Cold in the teens? We’re close to ZERO degree, that, IS cold!”, she’d always refused to give in to my statements and always rebutted, “You have the heaters, the house would be heated, and I don’t have that, inside AND outside, cold, throughout the entire day!”
From before I’d often returned back to Taiwan during the summers or autumns, I’d not felt the attacks of the winters in Taiwan. Until one time I’d come back here in February, and that time, I’d finally, felt the icy, frigid, in your bones kind of cold, and, I’d started an argument with my Polish husband over the cold weather, and that, was when I’d recalled the powers of the cold weather in Taiwan. Although the winters aren’t as cold in Taiwan as it is in Poland, but, as the temperatures dropped, and we’d not had the heaters available, it’s also, difficult to cope with.
or the simpler, vegetable soup, not my photo…
The defense against the cold, the best way is from inside the body, outward. From before when I’d lived in Poland, I’d taken from the people, drinking a lot of black teas, and heated up the red wines to consume from time to time, and I’d also made this fruity soup called “kompot”. After I’d come back to Taiwan, I’d not drunk that much tea anymore, nor did I make the Kompot soup, instead, I’d, started, drinking hot water. There was a Polish friend who’d lived in Taiwan, who’d shared with me, that after she’d come to Taiwan, she’d fallen in love with drinking hot water. I couldn’t understand it, but now, I seemed to: a simple glass of hot water can give people that sense of stability, and it wasn’t filled up with caffeine, like the teas, or the sugars either.
Other than hot water, in the winters, my body would crave the hot soups. There are, wide varieties of soups, from the savory, like chicken soup, pork soup, lamb stew, beef stews, the four ingredient soups…and, for the sweets, there are sweet wine with rice balls, red bean soups, taro starch ball soups, ginger with sweet tofu, purple sticky rice porridges, etc., etc., etc. I especially missed the rice balls with sweetened ferment rice, a bit sour, with the aromatic cooking wines, with the eggs, and sweetened rice balls, it’d warmed me up from the inside, filling me up with that sense of bliss.
We also have the sweetened, dessert-types..
But unfortunately, there are, so many things that I can’t eat because of being pregnant, I can only usually drink the chicken soup with mushroom and Chinese cabbage. This seemed to be a huge loss for me, but, actually, it’s just like how I lived in Poland—the chicken soup in Poland also just had the chicken breasts and some vegetables, and, we’d put some cilantro into it as we’d eaten it, with the thin-sliced noodles, very simple, but, the body warmed up quickly after we’d eaten it, and it’d felt, comforting. And, we can also switch the chicken and substitute it with beef, it’d become, richer in texture, another way of eating it.
Although, the winters in Taiwan, based off of Polish records, can only be considered as the autumn, but, being in Taiwan, I’m already, craving something hot now, this probably means, that I’m about to, head into the winter season with the rest of the people in Taiwan, I suppose.
So, once again, this, is how food can, spark up that memory, something that connects you to a place you’d lived, and, there are, a WIDE variety of kinds of soups, and, winter IS the season, for these things, because, it would, warm you up, from the inside OUT!!!