fade to bland

I didn't want to start eating too much too soon, but my stomach felt pretty good. I hadn't kept down more than a tablespoon of rice yesterday and my palate was clamouring for stimulation. Thankfully, when you haven't eaten for a day, toast with a little bit of butter is the most amazing thing in the world. I managed to keep two slices down, and I didn't notice any cold sweats or gastric spasms so I figured it was safe to go to work.

At work I had some farina made with water, not milk, some brown sugar and a little salt. I put twice as much water in as I should have for one serving, so it took forever to cook down. This was an accident, but I think it might have helped break the food down a little more for my weakened gullet.

For lunch I had rice from the night before that I'd boiled again with too much water to make a kind of porridge that I snuck a dash of Adobo con pimento into as it was cooking and a tortilla that I'd browned in a skillet without butter. It was very simple but it did the trick.

It was a bit tortuous to eat so simply, though, because there was again a wealth of free food in the building. I had turned down free bagels and muffins in the morning and free leftovers from some symposium luncheon in the afternoon only to be confronted with free pizza in the cafeteria, the open box wafting gutwrenching temptation towards me as I slurped my rice porridge.

For dinner I had a master plan of taking the crappy white bread I only eat when I have a stomach flu and cutting it into little squares and drizzling them with some of my homemade chicken stock and then broiling it so it got nice and toasty where not laden with wholesome healing juices. I stacked four slices on top of each other, and as I cut them, they compressed into unappetizing little flakes except where the crust managed to hold them up enough that at least you could separate one slice's crust from another. Undaunted I forged on, drizzling the chicken stock as planned, but since I only had a little left and it was on the fattier side, I used some of my vegetarian stock in the bottom of one of my small nabe (japanese crock pot) where the chicken broth-laden bread flakes were heaped. Since the pot was too deep to broil very effectively, and because I was feeling lazy and didn't want to check the oven very regularly, I decided to just bake it on a low heat that would provide for some toasting while allowing the bottom to also heat thoroughly (aka 350F). By the time I finally pulled it out of the oven it was nice and toasty on top, but the bottom had turned into this very unappealing white paste. I tried stirring the whole mess together to get some sort of stuffing and gravy kind of mix going on, but there was nothing to do but shovel it in. That together with a bowl of applesauce was my dinner, and the rest of the night I felt let down by my culinary muse and overful of stomach acid.