Chocolate for Sickos
I finally feel all right again. I can look at food without feeling sick, but I still feel unreasonably picky: bananas but no apples, grains but no nuts, hard cheeses sound good but not feta. Which is a shame, because I stocked up on fruits and vegetables at the Friday market, and I’ve been busy trying to pawn off my food all weekend in exchange for simple crackers and digestive biscuits. Or, better yet, leaving my stomach alone and not eating anything. Thus, to reconstitute, Shandra and I made amaranth chocolate last night.
Amaranth is a super-nutritious grain, which you can pop like popcorn. Itty-bitty popcorn. It’s like snow in a pot. Then Shandra, my vegetarian mentor flat-mate, comes along with the brilliant idea of mixing the stuff with (organic dark) chocolate to make our own version of crunchy puffed-rice chocolate bars. This was the best — and most substantial — food I’d had in days, but even our non-sick friends liked it. Next time we’ll put in more amaranth, and a bit of chili powder, for a truly Mesoamerican treat.
This morning I tried making quinoa with honey, but I have reaffirmed my dislike of warm breakfast cereal and instead had a banana, some apple juice, and the last ounce or two of chocolate. I don’t want to throw any curve-balls at my digestive system quite yet, so my diet must remain weird. This virus is frustrating to all of us, because it has no correlation with food. Every second or third person at CYA got hit, but so did Prof. Nicola’s daughter’s school. And apparently there was a Greek news item about hospitals being overrun with dehydrated patients. Yet it had all the symptoms of food poisoning, and everyone got it within the same afternoon — even my friend Becky, who was in Istanbul.
But thanks to the pick-me-up chocolate and banana — a neat trick, by the way, is to peel it from the bottom end, which a friend of a friend of friend learned from a monkey — I feel cheery and alive. It has been wonderful learning about thriving as a vegetarian, and I almost want to email Arthur and tell him how very possible it is to be happy and healthy without meat. Except that I don’t want to contend with people about what they eat, drink, and smoke, especially when I tend to internalize lessons without being able to regurgitate the particular facts that evangelicalizing requires. In fact, without a textbook in my hands, I’d probably be a terrible grade-school teacher, as well. So, carnivores, you escape my wrath this time…
I would have gotten away with it, too, if it wasn’t for you meddling kids.