2011: A year in (tasteful, tasteless) review

Everyone else seems to be doing end-of-year lists, and I'm nothing if not a bandwagon-jumper, so here's my run-down of most memorable Things Consumed in 2011.

It's hard to do a rated list, because this year was a challenging one: Some things were painful to eat, some things had no flavor, and anything consumed in the last few months has been the Best (insert ingredient here) Ever, purely because I could taste it.

So instead of a Top Ten countdown, we'll go (mostly) chronologically.

Hospital food
In January, I spent a week on the cancer ward, and became a little too familiar with hospital food. I'll be honest: I find it hard to even look at the images in this post. Especially the last one. It took a while before I could enjoy a golden sunrise without thinking about processed cheese squares.

I have awesome friends
Why? Because they recognized that the best way to respond to my illness was by bringing me food. Precious few of their gifts were healthy (ha!) but they were suitably high-calorie and, of course, delicious.

Losing it
I can't talk about this year in food without mentioning the three-month period where I was unable to taste anything. Yes, it gave me a new appreciation for the subtleties of the palate and the distinctions between flavors, but mostly I learned that having no tastebuds is the opposite of fun. And it's very nice when they come back again.

Home cooking
Not a single incident, this one, but a variety of memorable dishes made at home. Or at the house we rented in Gloucester, where the vintage kitchen was a perfect place to make blueberry cobbler, lemon meringue pie, and beef Wellington (The Boy's birthday-meal request).

And also a great location for inviting friends to share steak with chimichurri, grilled chourico, and various salads.



Back at our apartment, I got into a baking Thing, and managed to fill the freezer with chocolate-zucchini cake:



and peach cake:



My intention with the latter is to save it for the crummiest winter day possible. Nothing better than eating summery peaches during a snowstorm.

British food
Between finishing treatment and going back to work, I had a small window of time to zip back to England so my parents could see all my limbs were still attached. Even though my tastebuds weren't completely recovered, I still managed to eat ev-er-y-thing.

Which includes the obscene Sunday lunch, including baby's-head-sized Yorkshire pudding, at the Toby Carvery:



My dad at the gravy station. STATION. Because one type of gravy is not enough.



Dessert was Eton Mess, a bucket of meringue, cream and fruit:



Celebrations
There were lots of reasons for good times (come on!), including The Boy's grandmother's hundredth birthday; the wedding of our good friends Eric and Nicki, with a fabulous reception at Oleanna; and my almost-completely recovered sense of taste, with an incredible dinner at Journeyman.

Honorable mentions
I don't write about everything I stuff in my face, obviously. But I do record a large quantity thereof. Delicious things I had to capture for posterity this year included:

This treat, almost (almost!) too gorgeous to eat, buttery with a hint of lemon, from The Cookie Countess:



Rich, sweet figs stuffed with peach brandy ganache and covered in dark chocolate from Capone's in Cambridge:



And a stunningly complex housemade fig vermouth at Island Creek Oyster Bar (very small-batch; there was only one bottle left when we tried this):



You know, despite evidence to the contrary, I feel as though I've been very lucky this year. Yes, there were long-drawn-out moments of suckiness, but there were also a lot of extremely fun times and reasons to be thankful, especially for The Boy, and for friends and family.

I'm also very grateful to everyone who posted supportive comments on this here blog; I'll probably never meet most of you, but your kindness meant a huge amount during a tough time.

So happy New Year — wishing good health, happiness and delicious food to all!

Hospital food: the good, the bad, and the cheesy

Wow - first of all, thanks for the fabulous, supportive comments on my previous post! It means so much to know you're out there rootin' for me.

So: hospital food. Is it really so bad?

Well, I've now had seven meals on which to base an opinion. Among the best:

A perfectly acceptable salade Niçoise with everything but the capers. (I'm not sure that tomato is authentic, but we'll let that slide.)



Very juicy baked chicken (though the gravy, which claimed to be "the best!", was not).



Chocolate pudding!



Tapioca pudding!



Lime Jell-O!



The overall theme, if there is one, is New England diner: comforting, under-seasoned dishes. Which makes perfect sense for a Boston hospital — when you're sick, you don't want challenging dishes; you want something homely and recognizable.

But when you're feeling pretty much okay, even after two full days of induction chemo (thanks to powerful anti-nausea drugs), it's hard not to lose your appetite when faced with:

A dry, congealed turkey pot pie, in which only the peas are salvageable:



Turkey dinner with sad cauliflower au gratin and more of that the best turkey gravy:



This morning's Cheesy Scrambled Eggs (American cheese, of course, two corners of the square still resplendently unmelted):



The golden glow on its pasteurized surface came courtesy of the much more natural, glorious, sunrise:



I know I'm coming across as a food snob here (well, that is my role). So I also need to say that I completely understand the scale of the undertaking.

The hospital has one central kitchen, from which meals are shipped to various buildings and reheated at serving time. It's much more cost-effective to use frozen or canned vegetables, and soft, over-cooked food is easier to digest (though of course it loses nutritional value along the way). And the cost for The Boy to have an in-room, three-course meal with me is around $8, which, let's face it, is amazingly cheap for Boston dining.

My awesome nurse has been helpful at pointing out things to straight-up avoid: the burger, and anything fish, are two of her tips.

But I'm now at the point where I can read an item on the menu — Kung Pao Pork, say, or Spaghetti with Meat Sauce — and have a pretty good idea of what I'm going to get.

Which is why The Boy is bringing me something from Anna's Taqueria tonight.

Oh, and in case you're wondering whether sick people are fed the same way everywhere, here's a lovely gallery of international examples of hospital food. Japan looks to be a winner here.