Miso Soup
My favorite soup of all time is miso soup, and here’s why:
On our first date my boyfriend, Jared, decided to take me out to try sushi for the first time. Just to shed some light on our back story, Jared and I had known each other for the better part of the past 10 years. Age-wise, we are 7 years apart, and I met him when I was in gymnastics. Me being a student and him being an instructor, head coach actually. On that note, before everyone gets all weird about it, Cottonwood, Arizona is a painfully small town, and Jared and I often saw each other and interacted outside of the gym walls. He was really good friends with my brother and he had a great relationship with my parents, so it wasn’t as odd as it normally would be in our situation. So anyway, I had turned 18, and had recently stopped doing gymnastics because of a spine injury and I had taken a coaching job at the gym. We started spending more and more time together, as he was helping me with my physical therapy, one thing led to another and we ended up on this date.
Like I said, I had never had sushi before and didn’t know what to order, so Jared took the reins and ordered us several different kinds with an appetizer of edamame beans and miso soup. I was so nervous, I had never been on a date with anybody, let alone this amazing guy, and I was too starstruck by the entire situation to act like a normal person.
I feel like he knew this, because when our miso soups came and I was analyzing the chunks of perfectly squared tofu and floating seaweed, he took his bowl with both hands and raised it up in the air over the table and said,
“I want to cheers to us and this date, and to hopefully many amazing times together, I am so honored and happy to be here with you right now.”
So we clinked our bowls together and drank the salty broth, and that was the beginning to… us. Since then, miso soup has been a small detail in so many of our endeavors.
We had miso soup when we tried to make sushi for the first time. We had it on our first big vacation together in Hawaii last May. He’s brought it to me when I’ve been sick and has brought it to work for me on days when I was too busy to get lunch. It’s made an appearance on our birthdays, Valentine’s Day, our anniversary, and on those “just because” dates.
It’s just a small thing that holds so many memories for us, and that’s why miso soup is my favorite soup of all.
