The GirlAlive Blog

Food. And lack of food.

November 12, 2009 on 2:23 pm | In Life In General, Recipes and Food | 1 Comment

I miss food. I miss things with flavor that don’t leave me hungry shortly after.

My husband has gallstones. Probably. He got the temporary pseudo-diagnosis over a week ago. He doesn’t even get an ultrasound to confirm it until next week. So he can’t eat anything with fat in it until he gets surgery. It took weeks to get an ultrasound, so I dread to think about how long it will be to get surgery.

You all know I hate the American health care system. But there are times that it is good. Gallstones, for instance. I had them back in 1999. I had health insurance, and it’s one of those things that is basically always covered. I had no job, but the whole surgery only cost me about $25 out of pocket. I got an ultrasound the same day as my initial diagnosis. I got surgery a week later. I was home the day after surgery and was out at clubs with my friend Heather 5 days later.

On top of gallstones, my husband also has acid indigestion and possibly a healing duodenal ulcer. So he can’t have anything spicy or acidic. To sum up, I can’t have a dinner that includes fat, spices, tomatoes, or basically anything with flavor.

We also don’t have money. I’ve been out of work for about 3 months now. I have credit cards back in the US that cost me about £200 a month. Which I don’t have. My husband can scrape together a little bit of money for food. It comes out to about £5 per day for both of us. As long as the heating bill isn’t too high.

For the last few weeks, it has been an endless cycle of pasta with bland sauce, mashed potatoes with whatever we find in the freezer, and canned vegetable soup. We have some meat and stuff in the freezer, but we can’t eat it because it has fat in it.

I’m so bored with everything we have in our kitchen. I don’t have a problem with low fat cooking. That’s how I got gallstones in the first place (they’re God’s punishment for eating healthy). But the usual way to cover how bland low-fat food is is to make it spicy or tangy or interesting. I can’t even do that. Last night we had macaroni with tuna and fat free salad dressing. With the cold I’ve had for the last month, I literally couldn’t taste anything. It was a big bowl of pasta texture with flecks of tuna texture.

If you’re a friend from the US, send Bacon Salt! If you’re a friend from the UK, for Christmas what I’d really like is some Chinese food. Something deep fried and Szechuan flavored. Or maybe a curry. Cause if I don’t get some real food that tastes like something soon, I’m going to be tempted to try to remove my husband’s gallbladder myself.

Today is Husband’s birthday. Unspiced chicken with lettuce (with a side of pickles) is his special birthday dinner. And he might be able to have a few bites of low-fat cake. Hooray. My birthday is next month. I want Peking Style chicken and a tub of Ben and Jerry’s. Chances are, husband will still not have had his surgery, and I’ll get to have something flavorless served on top of something boring.