A love letter to kimchi

I didn’t choose the kimchi life, the kimchi life chose me.

You ever love something so much you become obsessed with it? This is how I am with kimchi. Imagine Smeagol obsession level but instead of the ceaseless pull of the one true ring, its a pungent seduction of fermented cabbage and garlic-ginger paste.

The first time I had tried kimchi I was working as a server at this local Korean & Japanese restaurant. It was the third job I was juggling during my last year of college - a sad attempt to scrounge as much money as I could before being flung into the real world of adulthood and debt (a story for another time). Needless to say, I was a depressed, desperate, broke and hungry college student with the dietary nutrition of a trucker.

I’d never tried Korean or Japanese food prior to working there. I also never had a true serving position as long as that one, so there were a lot of “firsts” I was experiencing — for example, learning that one is not supposed to help themselves to the uneaten bits of customers leftovers. As far as I’m concerned that’s a perfectly untouched shrimp tempura you expect me to just throw away? So alas, this is how I found out about kimchi. Or should I say, where kimchi found me.

Listen, if you are still stuck on the fact that I was eating food from the bussing station we’re going to have to move passed that. I was broke and hungry and in college. Some food leftover from strangers was the least concerning thing in my system, ya feel? Anyway-

I can’t tell you exactly what my first time was like. All I can tell you is how my life was after.

It’s like that scene from Interview with a Vampire when Lestat is about to give Louis his dark gift. Louis stands in a cemetery field watching his last sunrise, unable to recall any sunrise before. Everything prior to that moment a distant memory - then there’s a blackout - then I was forever changed. I had awaken with my kimchi eyes, and set out to become what I became.

Remember earlier when I mentioned I had the diet of a trucker? See, at that time I had been struggling with my health quite a bit. There’s only so long your body can run on a poor diet and out-of-whack stress levels. School teaches you a lot of things but it doesn’t teach you how to take care of yourself (also another story for another time). No amount of working out or going to the doctor was helping, and at some point my body had taken over and I began to experience uncontrollable food cravings. When I say uncontrollable, I mean uncontrollable. And it all began with kimchi…

What started out as innocent side dishes of kimchi turned into midnight munchies hovering over my fridge fork deep into kimchi jars. One night, I was craving kimchi so bad that I had drove myself to Whole Foods at nearly 9PM just to come home AND NOT BE ABLE TO OPEN THE GLASS JAR at which point I smashed the kimchi jar on my patio floor with a hammer because I was desperate for kimchi, and also because this was before I owned a jar opener. I ate kimchi from the floor that night.

My obsession was now becoming dangerous and I was determined to get a handle on things.

It was around this time I started to do research on kimchi and the possible reasons why I was having such strong cravings for it. I learned that kimchi, which is a traditional fermented dish from Korea, has been around for over thousands of years. Additionally, I learned that kimchi is a superfood, and that it’s probiotic properties have a powerful way of healing an unbalanced gut by adding good bacteria into your microbiome. I also learned that cravings are not always as random as we’ve been taught, but instead that they can sometimes be a good indicator of what your body is missing. I also bought a jar opener.

It wasn’t overnight but I slowly began to listen to my gut and my cravings, building an intuition for what I ate that made me feel good. It wasn’t kimchi alone either that helped me heal my body and become healthy again. Kimchi was just the gateway. It also took heavy dedication to exercise and a balanced diet to get things back on track. Although I’ve loved cooking for as long as I can remember, it was around this time that I became very passionate about food. I became passionate about how food had the ability to heal.

In a lot of ways the idea of “eat what you feel”, which is my big motto with Moodi Appetite, is tied to this very story. Although, in this case it was a little more extreme and I wasn’t just eating what I was feeling, but instead satisfying an insatiable thirst for kimchi. It was following my gut that got me through, and it was kimchi that kept me company along the way. <3

Keepin it spicy,

Alia Amoudi