I seem to be losing my sense of taste, and more worryingly my enjoyment of food. Chemo gives you a strong metallic taste for a long time which can ruin most tastes, but more strangely I am finding a sort of revolving door of tastes, where something I ate in the morning becomes unacceptable by the afternoon, and my palate shrinks before my eyes.
Food more and more seems to be just “kirum’ (Korean for fuel) a tool for living, lacking that pleasure you find in new, startling, unfamiliar or just favourite tastes and textures. Just combustion material for the engine inside - which of course is exactly what it is, but how dull if just that, how awful if devoid of the capacity to delight that makes life and the world we’re privileged to inhabit so special. I hope this is not it from now on.
I’m also developing instant cravings, and I just have to eat the taste which comes into my mind there and then. Mainly simple tastes: the other evening I was watching a movie called “Genova” with Oscar winner Colin Firth, and while they were eating I had the overwhelming urge to eat ‘spaghetti al aglio e olio’, so at 11pm there we were cooking the pasta! Not a brilliant movie I have to say, and for me memorable only for featuring the magical Ligurian coastline where I spent so many happy summers as a child.
Wow I can almost smell the pines and the extraordinary focaccia we’d collect fresh from the bakers every morning... Now that’s a taste I will never lose!
The memory for senses is such a powerful thing. I guess you have to hold on to that and wait for your tastebuds to rebalance. I had a terrible stomach bug a few years ago, just before I went on holiday to Puglia. It was food heaven, but my stomach just turned at all the wonderful pastas and delicacies - and I couldn't go near seafood. I can only imagine a tiny part of what you must be going through. Hang in there.
ReplyDelete