ON HUNGER (OR LOSING ONE’S APPETITE)
Sometimes even a food writer loses sight of why we actually eat
Dear Readers,
I have had roughly the same goddamned cough since early November, enough time that I feel like I should give it a name and assign it a personality. It's not COVID or RSV - it's just a cough that won't leave, ever, regardless of how rudely or politely I ask it to. The Washington Post had a story about lots of people getting coughs like this, but the story sort of petered out without much of a conclusion or recommendation for treatment. (Sample advice from story: “If drinking tea with honey makes you feel better, and it’s soothing, that’s great.”) Thanks, The Washington Post!
One of the quirks of this cough is that sometimes it's so benign as to be almost absent - a few delicate "keff keff keff"s in the evening, and then it goes back to its stately repose. But sometimes it reaches up from the swamp with a massive boggy gauntlet and swats me out of commission for four or five days, unable to work or care for my kids or really do much of anything other than lay in bed.
For the past week, the cough has been trying something new. It reached out and extinguished my sense of hunger, like damp fingers snuffing out a birthday candle.
The refrigerator, as a consequence, is a graveyard of attempted meals. There's 3/4ths of an order of spicy chicken tom kha that I nibbled at last week. There's a deli container full of butterscotch pudding that I craved until I made it. There are probably five or six servings of chicken and matzoh bowl soup that my wife made for me - I've had two small bowls' worth, and they were delicious, but that was all I could manage.
Every bad snacking habit I've ever picked up is gone. Scrounging for chocolate? Gone. Stray bowl of cereal between meals? Gone. Buying a bag of Pepperidge Farm cookies, swearing I'll only eat one layer's worth, and then eating two-to-three layers’ worth of cookies? Gone. Eating 15-20 Wheat Thins for absolutely no reason? Gone.
Becca and the kids had doughnuts for breakfast today (along with scrambled eggs) and I got about 40% of the way through my traditional chocolate long john before I lost interest completely. This makes very little sense. I really enjoy doughnuts! They are a delicious treat!
I'll show up at meals out of habit, but when all is said and done, I can't be subsisting on more than 400 or 500 calories daily - plus maybe 200 calories of Nyquil.
This is all a long wind up to introduce the fact that while THE COOKBOOK TEST continues, and you can expect a new edition in your inbox next Monday, it's going to take a little bit more work than usual for me to get into the kitchen and make the review happen. I'm incredibly inspired by the book - JAPANEASY BOWLS & BENTO by Tim Anderson - it's the sort of cooking I love to do, and the recipes look creative, fresh, and carefully written.
Here's hoping that I get my mojo (and my appetite) back this week. And if I don't? Well, to hell with it, I'll make it happen regardless and feed my family the results for enjoyment and assessment.
Here’s to staying hungry,
James
I feel like I should append an update to this post about being sick (which I wrote roughly a week ago) with the joyful post-script that I'm now feeling considerably better. Appetite and energy - back! Cough - still kind of lingering, but that's about it. Back to our regularly scheduled cookbooks a week from today!