Completely tasteless?

Dearest blog reader

I hope this finds you doing well. I am fine. I am well on my road to recovery.  I had been quite sick coming off of the Thanksgiving holiday season. The dreaded cold had attacked the back of my throat and eustation tubes. During the course of this plague, I lost all sense of smell and taste.  This sensory depravation lasted a week and taught me several lessons about my relationship with food.

The only blessing in the loss was that the last thing that I had tasted was pecan pie alamode with hot fudge. What a way to go out on top. It would have been very sad if my taste buds would have gone on strike after that morning's breakfast of straight oatmeal. That morning I had even eschewed cinnamon sugar that morning. Already feeling a bit weak from the oncoming snot storm, I could not work  the sugar cinnamon grinder.  Who would have guessed that freshness counts with the sugar cinnamon combo for your breakfast toast and oatmeal entrees?

Apparently, it does. The Domino corporation has convinced the consuming public that sugar tastes fresher when you grind it's  crystals just prior to consumption. For me, hope and justification springs eternal as I grab the grinder. Hoping that the grinding caloric burn is greater than the intake I justify the application of a teaspoon of sugar to make my oatmeal yummy.

So last Sunday while I was experiencing dessert nirvana and wondering if I should use the cherry or regular flavor NyQuil, the dastardly virus was insinuating itself between my taste buds and that place in my brain that says "yum, that's good. Why yes, i would love some more."

I knew something was wrong in the middle of the night when I couldn't taste the chlorine in our city water. I had gotten used to our water filter being inactive after 6 months of the warning light announcing that it was time to bring in a replacement. I had hoped that the light would eventually burn out and stop nagging me about this mundane household chore that I obviously had no time to bother myself with. It is just so difficult to find the dedicated staff to keep a household running these days. Downton Abbey has so inflated my expectations.

Being tasteless for an entire week, or rather missing the sense of taste for a week was enlightening. I have had a life long . . . Struggle would be too cliche and too strong a word choice. It has been a lifelong dance with weight. Actually, it is food that I dance with; the weight just hangs out over around the punch bowl. I love ice-cream and candy. Cookies are a favorite too. Chocolate chip is at the top of the list. Peanut butter chocolate no bake oatmeal cookies (cat crap cookies in the vernacular of Bev's family. Look at them on a cookie sheet) are a caloric force of nature with butter, sugar, peanut butter, and chocolate, all held together by that famous cholesterol fighter; quick oats.

A hundred human reasons, the interplay between genetics and emotions, make up the Gordian knot of our relationship with food. Last week I was reminded that the main reason for my dance with food is that it tastes good and I like good things. I put a piece of chocolate in my mouth and it tastes good. I eat what tastes good to me. I don't know why I had to re-realize this truth. It was one of the earliest lessons taught to my generation. Shoot, taste was used as a behavioral modifier. "I'm going to wash your mouth out with soap, young man." How many of you had to endure that threat or it's sisterly corollary?  It worked too. I just wrote shoot instead of H. E. double hockey sticks.

Like the prodigal's father, I spent the week looking down the road looking for the lost's return. After five days, my inner Eeyore was starting to surface. What if? What if everything tasted like cardboard for the rest of my life. I was starting to despair. Thankfully, the high tide of snot started to recede. First, I could almost taste the spicy chili; then the hint of parsley snuck through the chicken soup. Gradually, like the spring thaw, I have been restored; restored with a new sense the goodness of good food, and the feeling that I should treat every meal like it could be my last. I want to take time to savor it, linger over it and end every meal with the pinnacle of good taste;  Pecan pie alamode with hot fudge.

Take care

Roger