Kim Chee Rice

I had some kim chee fried rice in the fridge, brought home from an asian fusion restaurant I will go to multiple days in a row. It was exciting at first, knowing that it was in there, the thickly spiced cabbage fried with perfectly al dente rice, hard to to the tooth, as I like it.

I made lots of food plans. I would have whipped some eggs with a bit of cold water, heated up a frying pan with a thin layer of oil, cooking a pale yellow skin to hold the rice in a warm embrace. These rice omelets are the stuff I grew up on, afterschool treats and Saturday lunches, moments when my mother or my grandmother had some time to care for me, in between the intense crush of their jobs and complicated immigrant lives.

My life is complicated too, but in different ways, and I have little time to cook or even eat, which ravages my waist even more than stuffing myself. Not eating is way fattening for whatever reason. It always has been with me. The less I eat, the more of me there is. The more I eat, the slimmer I become. I wanted that rice omelet but it never happened, and the kim chee rice aged poorly in the uneven cold of the fridge.

Cabbage rots and emits a gas, and that permeated the entire ecosystem of the refrigerator. The sumptuous wheels of brie and gouda suffered from the proximity of the leftovers. Every time I opened the fridge to get a Whynatte, I would get a sulphurous punch in the face. The decay was hanging in the air around the kitchen like a cloud, a wet rain of funk, soaking everything.

I held on to the dream of the rice omelet, even though it was surely stillborn. I thought that it was going to happen, that even though it smelled like shit, it wouldn’t taste like it. I thought I would have time in the near future. As I slept, my dream self broke open eggs and heated pans. My real self never got that far.

Finally, in the middle of the night, I couldn’t take it anymore. I padded out to the kitchen pulled the offensive container out of the fridge. Like a sleepwalker I crept heavy and somnabulent down the hallway to the trash chute. I threw the rotting kim chee rice in its box down many floors, into the abyss, but the smell still hangs on, haunting my home as if it never left.

8 thoughts on “Kim Chee Rice

  1. Love kim chee fried rice!
    But no kim chee made by Koreans can overpower my husband’s. He is a naturalized Chinese-Vietnamese American who makes kim chee with fish sauce and dried shrimp. My son and I have to brace ourselves each time we open the frige where a new batch of kim chee is stored in big jars, small jars. However–if I ignore the stinks, his kim chee is rather delicious! Haha!

  2. Somehow there is always an old batch in freezer waiting for trash day and a new batch in the fridge waiting for the moment when inspiration and spare time collide.

    Worse, the reek of fried onion rings; but thankfully a very rare indulgence.

  3. sounds like a horrible experience with n. korean truth and the ugliness of bigoted morons from atlanta. love making kim chee but horrible cooking has become typical these days. it’s like giving miami a lot of credit and the tired iteration of rat-shit and uric acid are the gay limitations of this homo-land. yet, like the atlanta morons who exclaim trespassing and disrespect, it begs the question — trespassing?? you voyeuristic pieces of shit were the trolls in my bedroom in new york violating my privacy and trying to get away with taking my work. so then, someone steals my eye glasses, spits in my face, says “faggot get out of the u.s.”, and you support that?? disrespect?? and then, these bigoted, racist, sexist, chauvinist pieces of shit follow me to england, france, spain, and japan?? thankfully, i speak all of those languages, yet, bad rice, kim chee, and omelettes — it goes with uric acid, rat-shit, and ugly sex in new york. it’s all disgusting, distasteful, and pathetic. thanks, i think i’ll puke in accordance with the entire package of stupidity.

  4. p.s. yes, working with a scumbag crew of bridge and tunnel cliches of engineering catastrophes, it even made paris ugly like the conundrums of idiot philip. yes, kim chee rice omelette gone wrong — that is a production with rat shit and uric acid as the new york limitations. cheap. always cheap.

  5. I think I’ll make some kimchi fried rice tonight, in your honor. Don’t worry; I’ll eat it all, to avoid the wistful leftover daydreaming 😉

Leave a Reply to kalalaumango Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *