Ramen, Dumplings & Fiona Apple

Musical meals as solace in difficult times.

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It started with Joni Mitchell and a bagel. Not in the mood to make a meal or scroll through the endless streaming options for something to watch during dinner, I decided I would have a toasted cinnamon raisin bagel with cream cheese and lox and listen to Blue.

This happened in October 2023, but it could have been almost any time in the past several years. We are living in a world rocked by a daily news cycle of pain, hardship and unfathomable tragedy. And we are used to living with multiple screens but never quite focusing on any one thing—which makes the deluge of information only feel worse. For those of us who have the privilege to take a break from the bleak news, it does not pause feelings of helplessness and despair.

On that particular October night, I had been trying to meet an important deadline, so my exhaustion with screens—laptop, phone, television—was particularly overwhelming. I couldn’t bear the idea of taking in any words or images for one second more.

So I listened to Joni Mitchell's Blue with my bagel. The album wasn’t played on a stereo to provide ambiance — I wore headphones, my eyes closed, listening to “California” and “A Case of You.” I couldn’t have chosen a better album to ease my frazzled state. As I reveled in the tenderness and purity of Joni’s voice, I savored the saltiness of the salmon and the muted sweetness of the bagel.

And I had this thought:

I have never in my life savored a bagel. It's the kind of food that I had always eaten in a rush, sitting at a laptop while working. Never enjoyed in and of itself.

I thought about that simple meal for days afterward, and how it had been such a surprising balm for me. But also how much it differed from my usual behavior.

Ever since I was a teenager, I have been both an information junkie and an emotional eater, relying on the stimuli of consumption as a way to satiate my anxiety and discontent. I would often snack on Doritos while mainlining factoids and tidbits, only pausing to lick the orange dust off my fingers so I could turn the page or scroll down the screen. After listening to Blue, I began to reckon with how a near-lifetime of emotional eating, as well as endless hours spent on screens, were only band-aids that never truly helped me feel better. As the world has become more chaotic and often terrifying, these two longtime habits would not bring me any comfort either.

Since then, on the days that feel most overwhelming, the TV gets turned off and the laptop closed, and I make it a point to enjoy two simple pleasures that are surprisingly complementary. A grilled cheese sandwich with Japanese Breakfast's Soft Sounds from Another Planet. Yogurt rice and mango pickle with Raveena Aurora's Lucid. Ramen and dumplings with Fiona Apple’s When the Pawn... Chorizo nachos with Sabrina Carpenter’s Short n’ Sweet.

There is something about employing taste and sound, two senses that are not often paired together, that has given me a balance I have not experienced in a long time.

It has been nice to pair music with a simple meal and make them my primary pleasures for an evening. Doing so has given me a new idea of what emotional eating can be: consuming to be attuned to my emotions, rather than to numb them.

Our lives can be fast paced, and much of what happens we have little to no control over. The one thing that we can control is our environment, and what we let in to our private worlds. Next time you have one of your favorite meals, think about an album you haven’t listened to in full for a long time, and see if they go together. The odds are they will, because both share the significance of holding value for you.

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The Ministry Recommends…

Erin recommends Good Material by Dolly Alderton: I know, I know, I am somehow extremely late to board the Dolly Alderton train. I am now a passenger for life. Her latest novel follows a sad-sack, D-list comedian struggling to get over a breakup from his girlfriend, a successful insurance executive. It is set in London and right away, Alderton immerses you in a warm, witty world brimming with arch humor; it's also a refreshingly modern homage to friendship and free spirits. I would lend my hardcover to you but YOU WILL HAVE TO PRY IT FROM MY COLD DEAD HANDS.

Kirthana recommends Howard: It’s one thing to know that the late Howard Ashman and Alan Menken are responsible for the most beloved and enduring Disney songs of all time. To hear the lyrics for “Belle” or “Part of Your World” is to know Ashman was brilliant. But this Disney + documentary gives viewers a true understanding of his genius, and how his creative vision was instrumental in the Disney animated filmmaking renaissance. You’ll marvel at all Ashman accomplished at such a young age before passing away from AIDS at age forty, and mourn that the world lost him and his talent. (Also, the doc includes must-see footage of Angela Lansbury and Jerry Orbach recording “Be Our Guest” together that is too charming for words.)

Jennifer recommends Heidi Montag’s Superficial: The aughts punished certain young, female gossip rag subjects disproportionately, and we’ve seen recent redemption stories for the likes of Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton, with Hilton’s renaissance even going so far as to rethink her attempt at a pop music career, the single “Stars Are Blind,” with an appearance in the deadly serious 2020 film Promising Young Woman. With the devastating Los Angeles fires has come its own similar revival, this time of The Hills villain Heidi Montag’s 2010 album Superficial, which hit No. 1 on iTunes as fans streamed it to support Montag and husband Spencer Pratt after they lost their home in the disaster.

Are they perfect people? No. Is this the absolute ideal and only way to respond to this tragedy? No. But it doesn’t hurt anybody, and the album is perfectly good; the absolute standout “Body Language,” in fact, retains a place of honor on my workout playlist to this day. (It’s largely built on a sample of Yazoo’s 1982 hit “Situation,” but, my god, the taste level.) And I personally find this whole thing a bit uplifting in its own way. I remember meeting Heidi and Spencer for an Entertainment Weekly story on The Hills in the late 2000s, and coming away thinking they were made for each other. They’ve now gone the distance, outlasting any given Ben/Jen marriage, as my colleague Kirthana pointed out. Their survival instincts are unparalleled. Stream “Body Language.” You won’t regret it.

Thea recommends the Merrily We Roll Along soundtrack: I don't know why exactly I have returned in such a strong, obsessive capacity to the “Merrily We Roll Along” soundtrack but, if you need a soothing balm for your soul, I highly recommend doing the same. It is so joyous, so fun and I have re-listened to “Old Friends” approximately 100 times in the last few days. For a bonus experience, please watch Daniel Radcliffe, Jonathan Groff and Lindsay Mendez recording in the studio — when Jonathan Groff smiles, we all smile.

Saul recommends Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat: The documentary Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat (now available to stream on Kanopy) retells the story of Western involvement in the assassination of Congo’s Patrice Lumumba from an unusual perspective: that of the American musicians whose work was first used to provide a cover for American and European skullduggery. The movie is dense and rich; it has enough footnotes to keep a fleet of grad students busy for a year. But it is also intended to reorient the story of American jazz as, among other things, the sound of anti-colonialist ferment.