making soup

My mom once told me that making soup is therapeutic...a spiritual experience even. I agree for the most part. Monday I had the whole apartment to myself (which is a miracle considering that there are six of us). I cranked up my music and sang loudly while I chopped up vegetables. I started out with some Cuban dance music, then I moved on to some Italian music (to inspire appetite), and then I turned things down a bit with the chill sound of some Natalie Merchant.
One of my favorite things about making soup is that you really don't have to measure anything, and you can just kind of throw in whatever. Diced onion? Why not? Chicken? Sure! What veggies do I have in my freezer? I just peeled and diced and added things according to what colors I felt like my soup should have. Did I count how many carrots I put in? Of course not! I just kept putting them in until I was satisfied with the color ratio of orange to green, white, and all of the other things that made it in.
I lived in Kentucky for a few years, and a traditional dish that they have is a stew called "Burgoo." It is pretty yummy, but there are a lot of jokes about it because apparently a long time ago it was a stew that poor families would make with anything that they could find...random animals that they hunted, veggies they had from their gardens, or even animals that they found on the side of the road. Thinking about burgoo made me smile as I dug through my own cupboards, as well as the cupboards of my roommates for delicious things to throw in.
The apartment smelled amazing, and I enjoyed sitting on the kitchen table listening to the bubbling and plopping of the aromatic "brew" on the stove top. The final test came ah hour or two later. Was this soup purely therapeutic, or did it actually have palatable qualities? Su Min, my lovely Korean roommate was the brave soul to put my soup to the test. She scooped some out into a bowl and held the bowl to her lips, blowing on it until it was cool enough. She took a sip, and then shrieked out, "so good! Taste just like Korea soup. My mom make Korea soup. It make me think of home!" I was pretty thrilled by Su Min's answer. I had never made anything Korean before, and being able to do cross culture cooking without even trying is pretty exciting...too bad I didn't write down how I made it!