In recent months it has become a norm for me that I crave hot, soupy, broth-like meals after forcing myself to do household chores for a person I don't wish to see and I don't want to do.
Some people go for beer.
Others go for coffee or ice cream or snacks or have huge satisfying meals that curb down the sour and warm up the belly.
Me, I just want soup.
Doesn't have to be thick, only has to be hot.
A while ago I used to have soup noodles from this Indonesian cafe-diner at the other side of the shopping mall, but in recent days I discovered a new Taiwanese-style cafe closer to the bus interchange which also offered meals that I needed, and liked.
You know what's funny?
I never thought of myself as an oyster mee sua person.
I mean, it isn't one of the foods that I go straight for when I'm in Taiwan. (I prefer the sweet potato fries with plum powder or the soybean curd dessert with taro balls).
But more than once these days I find myself seated at the table in this place at NEX shopping mall slurping up the bowl of hot broth and mee sua the server has placed in front of me.
The most attractive thing about this bowl is the broth.
How to describe it, honestly, I don't know.
But there's the distinct taste of the soy sauce, there's what I think is vinegar, and then there's the thick, gooey, broth-like texture that reminds me very much of sharks' fin soup I used to have at Chinese restaurants every year.
The first spoon of the broth always goes down beautiful.
Heartwarming, comforting and oddly enough, stimulating and revitalizing at the same time, it never fails to ease my senses and calm my soul.
Maybe it's the sharp taste of the vinegar.
Maybe it's the blend of salty, vinegary, savory and the tart all together.
So good is it that I am happy enough to just have the soup, but by that time, I am tired and hungry, and there's this huge heap of mee sua swimming about inside the bowl, soft, mushy and tasty, so, yes, of course all the mee sua I will finish.
As well as the chicken.
I don't usually eat up all the oysters by myself though.
My friend likes them.
So I share.
Sometimes I give him three, sometimes I give him one.