Kimchi

Thoughts on "Delicious Reasons to Make Your Own Kimchi" - Tejal Rao

I am kimchi. 
At first, I was “sweet, crunchy Napa cabbage”: young and naive but feisty and curious. I am green, yes, but soon to be worldly. 

School was a kitchen of knives; I was unprepared. I was “quartered, salted, and drained” by land that did not look like me, yet I felt the red “gochugaru-stained sauce” blood running through my veins. I was left to rot, tossed and torn by my different sides. I was this young seasoned Korean cabbage on an American plate, feeling the walls of a foreign land as if I were blindfolded. 
So rot I did, for a while.

But the beautiful thing about rotting is sometimes you can control it. A lost girl can find the right recipes, the right sauces, and the right her. In all darkness, there is light. And so I fermented and soon—emerged from the darkness.
I am kimchi.

I am kimchi layered into a grilled cheese sandwich or in “extra-crunchy kimchi fried rice.”

I am kimchi in a “kimchi bibim guksu” or “wonderfully chewy kimchi pancakes.” 

I am who I want to be. My dishes have no limits.
I still fall. I still bleed. But my red juice is precious, spiced, and delicious. Every fall is another chance to get back up again—or season potatoes and porridge.
Kimchi “is on its own timeline.” Just as kimchi needs a process of constant testing and tuning, every day I need time to learn and grow. 
What started as a “sweet, crunchy Nappa cabbage” reemerged as kimchi, ready to find her place in the world.