Goddamn if one of my favorite things to do in life is eat and I can’t even do that. How long will this hell go on? I’ve been living on tea, pudding, and cup-a-soup for two days now and I’m getting more than cranky. Whiny, even. Bitchy is in my character, but whiny? No.
Chef, being a chef, came home from work last night and began to cook himself dinner but I banned him from making anything I like. (He made swordfish. Wilted spinach was banned.) I demanded a meal of overcooked, mushy mac and cheese but even that was too much.
And lo, when I woke up this morning and read my daily dose of Salon, it happens to be Foodie Wednesday, when the food writers of the world unite to torture Ms. Lauren with a treatise on Elvis Presley and his favorite foods and don’t even realize that nearly every dish covered isn’t singular to Presley’s ultra-bizarre, fatty palate, but are standard Southern snack staples. Fried peanut-butter and banana sandwiches? Love ‘em. They even have less calories than a Big Mac. Vinegar cole slaw on your dry Memphis barbeque sandwich? How the hell else do you eat them?
The writer at least gets something right here:
…as a child in rural Mississippi, the King ate lots of critters including rabbits, squirrels and opossums. And even before he invented his signature pelvic thrust, Elvis was into organs, especially pig’s feet, ears and chitterlings. Later on, after his parents moved him at age 14 to Memphis, he ate lots of sloppy Joes at Humes High School, according to school authorities. Well, who didn’t?
My dad shares stories about picking birdshot out of bites of opossum stew at a business gathering no more than fifteen years ago, capped off with somebody’s White Lightning bathtub liquor, or how he’s been to restaurants where they served your roasted raccoon with one foot still attached so you as a diner were assured that you weren’t eating a feral cat. Believe you me, in some areas of the country meals like this are commonplace, and even quite tasty, though I tend to wince at the ingestion of gelatinous hooves and stringy innards.
All I want right now is to eat something that I don’t sip out of a microwavable can.
UPDATE: My breath is vile. It smells like blood, stomach bile, and cream of broccoli, and I’m afraid to brush my teeth.
You’ll be surprised as to how quickly you’ll be eating your favorite foods again.
In the meantime, can’t Chef whip up some ultra-tasty soup with soft dumplings or something for you??
Oh my god. What the fuck are chitterlings?!?
Chitterlings, “chitlins” in the vernacular, a.k.a. offal, are large pig instestines boiled or stewed, then fried. Crispy!
My sincere condolences. Have some fancy ice cream to make yourself feel better.
RE bad breath: (always follow your doctor’s rules, but,) you should be able to lightly (ever so lightly) rinse your mouth with a salt-water solution (no sucking!). Just move your head around and let the salt-water follow gravity.
They sound like a species of cute trilobite or something.
Hope you feel better.
Anne has it right about the salt water swishing.
Trouble is, I like my salt with a little bit of Margarita!
A little tequila ought to kill the germs, right?
See if Chef can locate some Whip ‘n Chill?
(Oh, you’ll never fucking guess how you make it…. whip, then chill!)
It’d at least be a chance in texture, though wholly lacking in nutrition and pretty much also lacking in flavor. It’s chocolate-ish… And Whipped! And Chilled!
Ensure. It’s all about the Ensure (Chocolate flavored).
And this isn’t going to be of any help, but I remember when I had some massive dental surgery, they kinda forgot to tell me (and I couldn’t figure it out myself) that i’d have some bruising flush its way down and areas of my chin/throat might look yellow/green. I thought I had jaundice.
Wait…who the hell actually calls that stuff “chitterlings”? Other than, apparently, this Salon author…
The same type of person who thinks that pig’s feet are organs?