Ingredient number Three: I just read a statement from my financial planner, who happens to be a good writer, lucky for me. While dealing out the horrid news of financial loss for almost everyone these past weeks of Wall Street melt-down, he mentioned the one stock that has not gone down, but has, in fact, gone up. Campbell Soup. And that brings me to ingredient number three of Anxiety Soup, which is actual soup. But it is soup you make yourself, from scratch. Soup is an amazing food because, like salads (using only fresh ingredients for those) you can make it out of anything: old dead or dying celery stalks, shriveled up tomatoes and potatoes, crinkled up mushrooms, sour-pussed rutabagas and turnips, dried out beans. Whatever you have on hand will do. And soup, no matter what’s in it, always tastes good. No old shoes! But this is a part of soup’s magic: you can only go wrong if you have no sense of tas
te whatsoever and put in a cup of cumin when you should add a pinch. Choose your biggest pot, concentrate of cleaning out your entire refrigerator. If you don’t have anything in there, go out and shop. Buy lots of different vegetables, even some you’ve never seen before. Spend an hour chopping off heads and splitting things down the middle; this will relieve tension you weren’t aware you had. Put in lots of onion and garlic, you want to have strong breath; let your tears fall into the pot, you’re crying for your country. Put on music as you chop and stir, or use the time to do silent meditation, thanking the vegetables for appearing in your kitchen, ready to sacrifice themselves for you. Invite someone to share the soup with you; ladle it out in big earthy bowls. Add brown rice or quinoa if you have it, nutritional yeast (for your nerves), and if you can, eat it in front of a nice homemade fire.

— Alice Walker, Anxiety Soup, Oct. 2008