A Spork in the Road

I made potato pancakes last night, my own spin on an interesting recipe I found. I chopped mixed nuts in the food processor, chopped up some onion and parsley, and mixed it all in with leftover mashed potatoes. Then I made little patties, dipped them in corn meal, and lightly fried them in olive oil.

The pancakes themselves were good, but in combination with the eggplant I pickled last week, they were amazing, if I do say so myself.

(I didn’t even pickle the eggplant properly: I forgot to press the liquid out of the eggplant before pickling, but oh well. They still taste good. Lots of fennel seed!)

I myself am feeling somewhat pickled of late. I’m out of the deep dark shadow of chemo but realizing that the sun isn’t yet fully out. I’m still getting occasional mini-migraines that read like a weird recipe: 1 half hour blind spots, 1 half hour visual halo, 2 hours headache, dash of fatigue. The metallic taste has yet to vanish. And my counts are slowly climbing back up, sans medication, leaving me more tired than usual until my body remembers how to manufacture its immune system unaided.

My culinary adventure this weekend will probably be apple purses. Last weekend I made cream puffs, and the weekend before that, gingerbread with lemon sauce. It’s delightful not to be sunk into doom and woe on alternate weekends!

My last chemo fog, and so easier for me to bear. A fog nonetheless. Sluggish brain, neurons trying to fire through taffy. Taste buds asleep: Powerade tastes different from water while being entirely flavorless.

I can taste feta cheese and onions. If you can’t taste feta cheese and onions, you’re probably dead.

Waiting for steroids to kick in. My last steroids. (I hope, I hope, I hope. Every time I say “last,” I hope it’s true.) When they kick in I’ll be dopey but energized, instead of dopey but sluggish: doing stupid things faster.

Still, I’m managing to get things accomplished, one by one. Task by task. Dragging my addled wits together long enough to complete a task, then letting them wander for a while before corralling them again.

I walked to some friends’ house last night around 7:30pm. It was cool. The moon was one night short of full and glinted off the silhouettes of palm trees. As I walked, I could feel the living organism of the town around me, breathing and metabolizing. I felt like a cell wandering down an artery, and it was a gift to have even a glimpse of my connection to the greater organism.

The town around me. The region around the town. And out and out to the entire planet and its interlocking ecosystems. The magnificent body of the Earth.

I have cancer, I thought. And I am cancer. Humanity has become a cancer to the body of our planet, and we’re beginning to metastasize. Is it possible for cancer to decide to change its nature, to stop reproducing madly and corrupting its host? I guess we’ll find out over the coming decades.

The oyster population in the Chesapeake today stands at just 1% of its pre-1980 levels.
“Gem of the Ocean” – The Economist

Considering how integral oysters are to cleaning up the water, this is not good, as any Chesapeake aficionado knows. And oysters aren’t faring much better elsewhere; I’ve seen estimates that the current total oyster population is somewhere around 10% of pristine levels.

As in 90% gone.

The Environmental Defense Fund has a convenient seafood selector to help make eco-conscious seafood choices.

Do you think this would be a more effective ecological rallying cry: Don’t be cancer!

Hm. Maybe not.

We’ve started juicing this week, and it’s grand. Tasty and nutritious!

I’m also developing a relationship with aloe vera juice. It’s definitely an effective laxative, but I’m in the process of investigating the myriad other claims made by aloe vera proponents. It’s always difficult to sort out “close-minded medical establishment ignores effective naturopathic remedy” vs. “empty-headed quacks promote modern-day snake oil,” so the jury’s out on this one. I’m doing my reading and will probably report back once I have a handle on the whole thing.

Regardless, I like this kind of juicy better than the juicy I get on chemo days…