Today had two main foci, baking food to be consumed later in my chemo cycle, and watching the hearings on TV. I did more of the latter, because I just couldn't find a whole lot of energy to do more than agree when my daughter suggested foods to be stored for later. She did all the cooking and I mostly lay around, turning on the a/c when I needed to. I'm a little concerned that I never fully recovered my energy this cycle. I hope that this upcoming round is not significantly worse than the one that is ending. I'm not sure I'll get a whole lot accomplished in the next six weeks if it's that bad.
We've been pretty scientific in our approach to what foods to prepare. I got recommendations to try foods that have a lot of lemon, vinegar, salt, ginger, and sugar. I've had to eliminate anything with cold cheese, because my mouth and brain are interpreting the texture as something horrible and artificial. Anything spicier than uber-mild causes heartburn. And things that ought to be good old bland go-to items (think BRAT diet) make me extra nauseated. I threw up gluten free banana bread early in week one, and that makes three of the four initials in BRAT problematic. It took me two days to choke down a school-lunch sized snack cup of applesauce two weeks ago, and I cringed every time my husband tried to offer me the white rice we had leftover that week, so let's just call the whole thing a non-starter. But it won't just be the first week that I'll need to eat, and there will be lots of days where I'll be alone, needing to feed myself over the next six weeks, so the more pre-made "meals" the better. I put meals in quotes, because we are using the smallest portion sizes we could find plastic storage for on purpose. Most of my meals will be fist-sized or smaller for at least half of the remaining two cycles. But we are going to try things that seem appealing now, while I'm feeling somewhat normal, like quiche Lorraine, cinnamon coffee cake, and quinoa-based couscous. We already packed up some silver dollar pancakes made with green banana flour. I enjoyed the sample one I tried today, but I have to hope that it's okay with metallic-bitter chemo mouth later.
My biggest contribution to food all day was to settle in at the table and pit the entire cherry harvest for this summer. I had the absorbent doggie pad that my paintings had dried on the other day, and disposable gloves, and I still got covered in cherry juice up to my elbows. I learned from Pinterest that poking the pits out with a metal cake decorating tip was efficient, and even so it took me more than an hour to complete the large bowl of cherries we got this year. My daughter made up a syrup that was a blend of regular and brown sugar, orange zest and fresh juice, vanilla and almond extracts, and just a dash of ground cloves. We didn't put in nearly enough corn starch to thicken the sauce, but that didn't stop the entire D&D group from raving over how it turned out. It was fabulous. If someone needs a recipe with all the ingredients and a revised proportion recommendation, I can offer that up. If my cinnamon-pecan coffeecake comes out like I expect tomorrow, I might write that up too.
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