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!

State of the Tastebuds

I figured it was time for a quick update on my eating abilities.

(If you're new to the blog, you can catch up on my cancer treatment adventures.)

The good news is that, tastewise, I'm pretty much back to normal. I can distinguish flavors almost as well as I could before treatment, as my recent post on dinner at Journeyman will attest.

But there are still a few annoying details, such as:

Dryness
Radiation zapped out my salivary glands. Allegedly they will return at some point (months? Years?), but until then my mouth dries out constantly. Me + water bottle = Linus + security blanket. I get like a junkie between fixes if I think I won't have a chance to refill it.

And of course it's not just an issue when my mouth is at rest (like that ever happens); there's now a whole new set of concerns about what and how I eat, especially when it comes to foods like:

• Bread (soaks up any residual saliva like a sponge)


• Cheese (turns gummy and gluey)


• Chocolate (does not melt in the mouth. Sticks to the teeth and stays there)


• Nuts, crackers, chips, popcorn (you know the Saltine cracker challenge? Like that. All the time).

Of course, generally all this discomfort can be avoided by taking a sip of water with each bite. But what does that mean? The intrinsic flavors of whatever lovely thing I'm eating get diluted — literally watered down. So instead of some carefully crafted cheese, I get liquid with a vague hint of two-year-old Comté.

Hotness
Okay, I never had the oral fortitude to take on vindaloo. But I do (did?) enjoy cuisines that employed spices: Mexican, Middle Eastern, Chinese, Indian. Now, though, I stare warily at fresh-ground pepper. I find gingerbread adventurous. Pesto is a teeny bit too garlicky.

A while back, I picked up some Vosges Aztec Elixir hot chocolate mix, which is kicked up with ancho and chipotle chilis. I was planning to keep it for the first brutal snowstorm; I was almost hoping for a good blizzard (me, Miss Anti-Winter) so I'd have an excuse to break into it.

But now I'm worried that after all the anticipation, I'll take one sip and realize it's too much for me to handle.

I've become one of those people: "Excuse me, but how hot is this dish? Is it spicy? Because I can't eat anything spicy."

I still love going out to eat, of course. But I used to be able to close my eyes and point at any menu item and say, "Yes, that one" (not that I would, but you know what I mean). Now I have to read each description carefully: how hot are the "spicy garbanzos"? Is pepper jack the only cheese option? Do all the maki rolls have wasabi in them?

This is supposed to get better over time; I just don't have a sense of how long "time" is. It's the kind of thing that depends on age, treatment type, and the body's overall ability to recover from trauma.

Big bites
One of the post-treatment gifts that keeps on giving is the dime-sized chunk of scar tissue in my cheek. It's not visible from the outside, but it limits my ability to open my mouth as wide as I used to.

You know when you're being overly dramatic and you stick two fingers in your mouth and pretend to blow your brains out? (Or is that just me?) Anyway I can't do that. I eat bananas by nibbling daintily around the outside. I dine most comfortably with a dessert fork or a teaspoon.

Again, this is supposed to be temporary, but change is all up to me. If I'm good and do stretching exercises, it will eventually loosen up (though I don't know whether it will ever return to its original flexibility).

Problem is that I forget. Or I remember at inopportune times, like when I'm on the subway or in a meeting. Not the time to start randomly opening and closing my mouth ("Hey, guess what I am now? Goldfish!")

Yech, this turned into a bit of a complainy thing. Not my intention; just wanted to share some of what life is like right now. And I know things could be muuuhuuch worse.

So, back to talking about food I can eat.

They're coming baaaack ...

After weeks (or possibly months; I'm losing track of time) of everything tasting like beige cardboard, I've started saying things like this:

"Wow, it was a good idea to add a little cumin to the guacamole."

"Did they just throw a KFC spice pack onto this chicken?"

"I love when pork sausage has fennel in it."

Yes, please welcome my brand new baby taste buds to the world.

They're not all the way back yet, though, and sometimes I get fooled. Like the other day when I ordered an iced chai latte at Starbucks, and exclaimed delightedly to The Boy that I could taste sweet things again. He took a sip and winced (this from someone who likes Vietnamese coffee loaded with condensed milk).

"No," he said, "you don't have your sweet buds back yet; this is just an obscenely sweet drink. If you could actually taste it, you'd hate it."

Turns out the iced chai latte has 31 grams of sugar (the recommended daily allowance for women is 25g). A dead elephant would have been able to detect sweetness in that one.

I'm particularly happy that I'm getting my tastes back in summer, when there are so many good things to eat. After a winter of bean and root vegetable soups, and a spring in which I missed out on ramps and fiddleheads and shad roe, it's great to be close to a point where I can enjoy ripe peaches and tart cherries and sweet tomatoes.

The other day, we harvested our strawberries. Okay, it was only one tiny berry; the other 50% of the crop — that is, the only other berry — was nabbed by a bird. But that thumbnail-sized fruit was pretty much the best thing I'd tasted all year.

Needs more salt/sugar

I haven't posted in a while because, it seemed, there wasn't much to report. But that's not actually true.

My skin has healed up, and there's now just a heightened redness on my cheek to show where the radiation was focused. (Oddly, I've also lost some sensation on my face; I can feel my hand on my chin, but not the detail of my cat's fur).

My mouth is still pretty dry, and I carry a water bottle everywhere, a little obsessively, which makes me feel like Linus with his security blanket.

I'm tired, but less so each day, and I'm finding small projects around the house and in the garden to keep me active.

But on to important matters: how are the taste buds?

They're still mostly sleeping, it seems, but waking gradually. I'm more aware of certain flavors, though they're still dim, as if they're in the next room.

Sweet and salty stil do not register at all. I can sprinkle sugar right on my tongue and get nothing but the feel of the crystals as they slowly dissolve (very slowly, given my lack of saliva).

And I remembered something a friend said after he had finished cancer treatment and was just getting his taste buds back: that he could taste something and recognize it — oh, that's chocolate — but the recognition was not enough to make him crave a second bite.

At the time, I only understood what he meant in theory. Now I'm entering that stage, it makes much more sense. And I realize how much our enjoyment of food is related to how sweet or salty it is.

So I've been trying different foods to see what registers: a bite of cheese here, a strawberry there. Yesterday I tried a salted cashew. I definitely got a (dim) nutty flavor, but of course no salt. And unsalted nuts are just not as tasty as salted.

I also had coffee with a friend, and tasted a little of her slice of chocolate cake. Yes, there was a hint of chocolate, but without the pull of sweetness that fills the mouth and draws you back to the plate for another forkful.

(My oncologist has predicted that it could take four months — four! Months! — before I can completely taste chocolate again. I hope to prove him wrong.)

It's more than just the simple on/off of sweet or not. Flavors are one-dimensional, devoid of detail or subtlety. Load something with fresh herbs if you wish, or create a complex marinade, but don't expect me to react with more than, "Is this chicken? I think it's chicken."

None of this has dampened my interest in food, thankfully, or my desire to cook and eat. Next week I'm trying out an apple-maple-bacon cake for The Boy's birthday; I'm also waiting for a chance to try out these beautiful Chinese tea eggs.

And I just have to keep reminding myself that this is a temporary state. One day, I'm sure, I'll be halfway through eating something and suddenly realize I can taste everything.

My muted tongue

So here I am, a week and a bit out of treatment. As predicted, my skin has healed remarkably fast, and now I'm only waiting for a small area on my cheek to clear up. My salivary glands, which had taken a hit and started producing excessive mucus instead of saliva, are mostly back to normal, though my mouth still gets dry if I don't drink water regularly.

And while I was quite fatigued on the last day of radiation (a fact I only learned when I wore myself out baking cookies as a thank-you for my technicians), I'm getting much better.

But I still have no taste.

Okay, not entirely true: I've discovered that I can identify coconut, so avocado-coconut smoothies are my new friend. I can also taste the sweetness in turnip, which was in my soup last week. And I can detect lemon (I added some zest to an asparagus soup today), though it has an odd metallic edge.

But sugar just feels like granules in my mouth, and chocolate might as well not exist.

On top of the taste issue is the fact that my dry mouth makes it difficult to eat anything that's not already moistened. Cereal in milk is okay; bread is not.

So I'm in this strange position of craving certain foods — cheese, toast, roast chicken, oatmeal raisin cookies — but at the same time not wanting to eat them, because doing so would be frustrating.

A couple of weeks ago, The Boy brought home tres leches cake, which I love. (And it was a good idea, because it's a pretty moist treat.) But because I couldn't taste it at all, it just made me sad.

Being able to see delicious food — and perhaps worse, being able to smell it — is like watching your favorite music video with the mute button on. You get the visual, so some of the pleasure is there, but there's such a large part missing. And you can hear in your head how it's supposed to sound, but that's not the same as actually listening.

I'm trying to be patient, but I really want someone to hurry and turn up the volume.

It doesn't matter, they all taste the same

Counting down to the end of radiation treatment: 13 sessions to go. That means two more weeks of Mon-Fri, plus three days. Ohai light, I see you at the end of the tunnel!

And things are going more or less fine. I'm still able to eat semi-solid food (carefully, using a teeny espresso spoon, chewing on one side only) and my weight hasn't changed. My team is keeping watch on my red blood cell count — if it drops below 30 somethings, standard practice is a blood transfusion — but at least this week the number went up.

I had my third acupuncture session this week: needles in two points on my ankle (for the spleen), two in my hand (for dry mouth), one in my stomach (general well-being), one in the bridge of my nose (emotional balance) and one in the very top of my head (no idea). I can't tell whether it makes a difference, because I have no 'puncture-free experience to measure against. But I'll do a couple more sessions just in case. Can't hurt, right?

And I still have no taste buds. Or more correctly, I have even less taste sensation than last week. And somehow my brain hasn't quite caught on to this fact yet.

Example: I was hungry after treatment on Thursday, so we went to the main cafeteria at MGH. It's like a food court, with areas for salads, pizza, soups, and an ice cream bar doing scoops, banana splits, frappes, etc. Perfect.

As we were standing in line, waiting for our turn, I checked out the ice cream flavors. Hmm, what do I want? Coffee, chocolate, strawberry? Peanut butter — ew, no! Ooh, raspberry ripple. Yes.

And then of course I got my frappe and took a sip and remembered that it doesn't matter what flavor I choose, because they all taste the same: neutral.

Later, we went to the grocery store to stock up on Odwalla protein shakes (because they're quick and easy and go a long way towards my daily protein intake). I grabbed a couple of each flavor so I wouldn't get bored of the same thing every time — again, as though option A would taste any different than option B.

Something else I've noticed: I don't remember what things taste like.

If I try and imagine the taste of, say, chocolate, or cherries, or cheese, I come up empty. I can remember how it feels to enjoy the flavors on a more emotional level, but it's as though someone has gone through my mind with a black marker and redacted the sensation. I can understand the concept of flavor intellectually, but not practically.

I can still smell, of course. The Boy has a chicken stew going right now, and the house is fragrant with bacon and onions. He'll cook it until everything falls apart, and then he'll let it sit for a day so all the flavors come together.

And while I know that, from my perspective, that doesn't make a difference, I'm still looking forward to eating it.

Tasteless

I'm almost at the halfway mark in my radiation treatment: 17 sessions down, 18 to go.

The sessions themselves aren't too bad — I show up, choose some music (they have Grooveshark set up so people can listen to whatever they want) and then lay down so that the technicians can fit my customized mask over my face and secure it to the table. Then I stay perfectly still and focus on the music while an enormous machine rotates around my head, zapping me with high-intensity beams from different angles.

And then it's over and I go home and wait to do it again the next day.

That's not all, of course. On Tuesdays I also meet with my doctor; on Wednesdays I get chemo; on Fridays I've been getting acupuncture as well. My days revolve around getting ready for hospital, traveling to the hospital, waiting in the hospital, being poked with needles/pumped with drugs/zapped with lasers, and traveling home again. Busy busy.

For the most part, luckily, my eating habits have not been disrupted. Or at least not until this week, when mucositis stopped by for a chat and decided to stay. Unable to chew food without pain, suddenly I was back to a diet of soups, Odwalla shakes, and anything that would surrender to my hand-blender.

How I love that blender; it turned leftover bolognese sauce into a rich beef soup (with a good dollop of Greek yogurt). It whizzed a spring risotto into something we decided would make a great party dip. It transformed mashed potato into velvety pommes purées (I suspect the 4:1 potato/butter ratio may have helped a little — hey, doctor says I need calories!).

But something else is happening at the same time: I'm losing my sense of taste.

I knew this was a likely (if not inevitable) side effect of the radiation, but I didn't have a sense of when it would happen or how long it would take.

One morning, as I was slicing up banana for our breakfast smoothie, I popped a piece in my mouth. It tasted ... as though the banana was in the next room.

Later I had pasta, and couldn't detect any flavor (though the pesto with it was as bright as ever).

Roasted cod I tasted, though dimly, especially in contrast to the accompanying black olives.

But cheese is gone. Gone. I tried some Borough Market cheddar — which is pretty strong — and it was just texture, nothing more.

HOW CAN I NOT TASTE CHEESE????

By this morning, the mucositis had subsided to the extent that I was ready for something non-liquidized for lunch. I fried some of the leftover pureed potato in olive oil and made a hole in the middle of the potato mass in the pan. Then I dropped in a pat of butter and threw in an egg. Then I covered the whole thing in parmesan and put it under the broiler to finish. It smelled great.

I was halfway through eating it (small, careful bites) when I realized that I could hardly taste it. There was plenty of mouthfeel: the creamy potatoes, the rich egg yolk, the crunchy extra-fried bits. But not much else.

I went to the kitchen, got the salt grinder, cranked a little onto a mound of potato. Mm .. nope, nothing. Maybe more salt? Nuh-uh.

How about just eating salt by itself? Apply crystals directly to tongue: nada.

Naturally, I did what any self-respecting modern gal would do: I posted this news as my Facebook status. I got a quick response from former coworker (and host of the fabulous 60 Second Recap) Jenny, who asked, "What about umami?"

So I reached for the Heinz ketchup, because it covers all the taste bases. As Malcolm Gladwell writes in The Ketchup Conundrum (a great read in general):

"The taste of Heinz's ketchup began at the tip of the tongue, where our receptors for sweet and salty first appear, moved along the sides, where sour notes seem the strongest, then hit the back of the tongue, for umami and bitter, in one long crescendo. How many things in the supermarket run the sensory spectrum like this?"

But I didn't get the crescendo. I got:

Sad Trombone

A thin shiver of vinegar; a shadow of sweetness. That's about it.

But my taste hasn't completely gone, at least not yet. I can still tell when something is chocolate, and berries are more or less berries.

And in general, I'm hopeful that the other senses will step up and take over. I'm planning on using a lot of fresh herbs and aromatics, and on making sure (at least when I can chew) there's a good variety of texture in my meals.

Right now I hear The Boy wielding the trusty hand blender. He's roasted some butternut squash and whizzed it into soup for dinner.

I have no idea whether I'll be able to taste it, but boy does it smell good.