And now, for something completely different

The new drugs I’m on kill my appetite.

Kill.  I have no sense of full­ness until– boom– I’m sud­denly nau­seous– and if I eat some­thing too sweet, it gets my gag on some­thing fierce.

There’s a post I’ve been work­ing on– badly– for­ever, it seems, about food and con­trol and issues of fat­ness and thin­ness and all of that jive.  It’s not get­ting too far.  Suf­fice it to say I’m not hun­gry.  I feel that as a loss, not just because I get no sig­nal betwixt my brain and my stomach.

Cooking’s cre­ative for me– med­i­ta­tive for me– relax­ation, alone-time, a sen­sory, sen­sual process for some­one who lives in her head and spends much time talk­ing and think­ing.  To be instead tast­ing and feel­ing and smelling and feed­ing– it’s hard to encom­pass all the reward that can bring.

And yet– I’m not hun­gry.  And I don’t know I’m not hun­gry, except when my head is all buzzy and I’m feel­ing con­fused.  I don’t think about food, dream of menus to cook, peruse cook­books in pur­suit of large din­ners to cook for fam­ily and friends in expres­sions of love, because say­ing such things aloud?

Not gen­teel.  Not gen­teel at all, don’t you know.

And in the mean­time, my poor husband’s eat­ing peanut but­ter and jelly, I’m nearly pass­ing out at my job, and I’m los­ing even more weight than I ought, all because I’m not hun­gry nor think­ing about food.  (To the tune of thirty pounds since I started my book­store job, all in all.  Yeah.  I really don’t need to lose any more weight.  Not the kind of thing most peo­ple com­plain about, and yet, still…)

I’m not yet back to dream­ing up menus.  Nor am I up to the spon­ta­neous cre­ation of meals.  But I can dogear my food mag­a­zines and bring them to the mar­ket and do my shop­ping that way– and then I can cook them and take pho­tos– and I can share them with you, at least virtually.

The fol­low­ing things– my, they were tasty.

Slow-Braised Hal­ibut with Shaved Fen­nel and Aspara­gus Salad from April’s Bon Appetit– served with Louis Jadot’s Macon-Villages.  Lovely, piquant, dif­fer­ent, the fish was rich with­out being heavy, and the salad, while kind of a pain in the butt with the shav­ing and peel­ing (next time, I am just putting the whole clump of aspara­gus spears butt-down on the man­do­line and slic­ing them into lit­tle rounds, be damned with the ele­gant strips, since I’d already used the thing to shave all the fen­nel) was really lovely and fresh.  The salad alone is well worth the repeat, maybe on its own as an entree with some hard-boiled eggs, some sliced radishes, that kind of thing.  But the fish, and the but­tery crumbs.  It was deli­cious.  The recipe wasn’t clear what to do with the aspara­gus tips, so I tossed them in with the fish to roast.  They were a bit al dente, but I like them a lit­tle bit crunchy, so it was all good.

Five-Spice Ground Pork with Chi­nese Egg Noo­dles from (these are all the most recent) Fine Cook­ing, served with Cop­pola Black-Label Claret (2007)– I would increase the amount of red pep­per and have more lime wedges at table as a per­sonal pref­er­ence.  I might also serve it with beer instead of red wine.  (Also, peanut alert.  This would be equally awe­some with cashews.)

Rice Noo­dles with Chicken and Cilantro from Fine Cook­ing (subbed for Shrimp), served with Il Pros­ecco.  I would serve red hot sauce as a condi­ment to add at the table, along with some soy sauce, for extra wet-tening/salt-ening pur­poses.  I might also up the gin­ger and jalapeno quo­tient by half again, but I’ve become quite the fan of hot­ter foods in the last year or two.  Note that I made this with already-cooked chicken, and so skipped some of the steps in the recipe about cook­ing the shrimp– I just cubed the grilled chicken and added it right at the end to warm through with the sauce before adding the noo­dles and sauce to blend all the flavors.

Creamy Braised Onions and Gar­lic with Spaghetti from Fine Cook­ing– the sausage was an add-in for more pro­tein, and I used onions instead of leeks, and creme fraiche instead of heavy cream because that’s what I had.  I used ver­mouth as my sta­ple white wine.

I can’t tell you how NOM this last one was with the creme fraiche and the long-simmered onions.  It was kind of like french onion soup, except bet­ter.  It really was com­fort food, and while not gluten free (some­thing I need to keep bet­ter watch of, except calo­ries are some­thing I’m more con­cerned about at this point, quite frankly), it was really delicious.

So.  Happy cook­ing.  May your mag­a­zines be dogeared as you float through the aisles at the mar­ket, and may your hus­bands and wives and sig­nif­i­cant dog­gies and kit­ties and ham­sters look at you funny and say “Why don’t you just make out a list?” and you can just look at them over your glasses and say “Shut up, at least I am cook­ing,” and damnit, you will eat very well.

Espe­cially the one with the fish and the one with the creme fraiche.  Not that I have any favorites.  I LOVE ALL MY CHILDREN.