I couple of months ago I absolutely fell in love with a hot and sour soup with sweet potato vermicelli noodles at a local Szechuan restaurant. It is spicy, tangy, and I love the rubbery texture of the clear sweet potato noodles and the crunch of the bok choi. Soup heaven. The problem is that every time I have it (basically weekly) I manage to aspirate some of the soup and collapse into a spluttering mess. This is a small restaurant and it is impossible to choke without drawing attention. I don’t know whether this happens to other people, but when I manage to inhale even a single atom of chili-laden soup, my lungs just shut down for a few seconds and I cannot even inhale. I am really choking to death, if only for a few seconds. By my reckoning, the problem is that the spiciness of the soup makes my nose run, and when I sniffle to clear my nose, any soup that happens to be in my mouth/throat gets sucked into my airway, causing the asphyxiation.
Gotta question whether it’s worth it, but I do love that soup…
Anyway, today I succumbed again to temptation and ordered the soup. For 30 agonizing minutes I ate very very carefully, taking small bites and only sipping the broth very carefully. And making special care that any sniffling was undertaken only after I had cleared my throat and washed down any residue with water. And I am happy to tell you that I did not choke. I think that the restaurant staff were relieved too.
So all’s well that ends well. Until next week… :rolleyes:
Being sneakily choked by your bowl of soup certainly makes this end quote true.
“So many people now have found themselves in an adversarial relationship with food, which is very tragic,” Dr. Bays said. “Eating should be a pleasurable activity.”
My mother ended up with a very similar relationship with oranges. Who knows how it started? As the years went on, it was one of the family jokes: if you hear choking, coughing, gasping, Momma’s eating an orange…
It started with orange segments. Then it included orange juice. It ended up stretching everyone’s credulity when orange CANDY provoked the reaction. She never progressed to the blue-face, arm-waving, call 911 stage, and it never progressed with stuff dripping from every facial orifice, but if it was orange, Momma coughed and choked.
I’m sure it began with a legitimate cause. She probably bit into a juicy pocket of orange that squirted to the back of her mouth. But as the years passed and even orange candy made her cough, there had to be a psychological component.
Enjoy your soup. And let’s just say it includes an entertainment component!
Thank you for the opportunity to revisit some memories of Momma. I’ll keep a little smile on my face today!
~VOW
I have this issue with spicy soup, too. It happens when I eat Szechwan hot and sour, Korean soft tofu soup, and Vietnamese bun bo hue. Just sucking a few molecules of capsaicin back onto my tonsils is enough to trigger a reaction. It doesn’t stop me from eating them, though!
Three coworkers and I once went to lunch at a Thai place. One of our companions was pretty much a gas-station-hot-dog and Big Mac kind of guy and totally unfamiliar with Thai cuisine. Included with the lunch specials was a bowl of soup, either tom yum or tom kha gai, pretty typical and a little spicy. Poor Jimmy got some down the wrong pipe and, well, we all got wet from the coughing and sputtering.