Words from the immortal Moliere.
I hate being sick.
I’ve had this virus for almost two weeks now, and I’m slowly getting my voice back (though I still sound like any of the seven samurai in Seven Samurai) but this getting sick business is getting way out of hand. I tend to panic when I’m sick because of work backlog and study backlog and laundry backlog...oh dear Lord how is the world ever going to function without me? Riiiiiiight...
So I decided to face up to the truth. I’m a sick woman. It’s not my fault that I teach in a Petri dish of a classroom with five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred viruses going back and forth. Take a deep breath (as deep as you can while mucus is draining out of your nasal cavity). Ohm (damn it, I haven’t been to yoga for more than a week!). Love myself. And that means...FOOD!
It’s amazing how I can find a way to segue from the disgusting to the appetizing.
The thing is with being sick, it can’t just be any food. Colds and fevers in particular leave a delightfully bitter aftertaste to any morsel (or maybe it was that extra tablet of Biogesic you took to drive away the little elves drilling from the inside of your skull). I remember the first time I had the flu during a particularly traumatic afternoon waiting in the rain for a taxi (more on my childhood demons some other time). I remember that dinner that evening was the wonderful pork stew simmered with pork and beans. I remember that I could not eat a bite and that I was not able to watch premiere telecast Superman on Channel 9. I would be the only five-year old who didn’t watch it, adding to my reputation of being uncool.
Anyway, going back to the stew. It’s one of my most favorite things in the world. And the one time I needed to eat it, I couldn’t force it down my throat.
When I was in the hospital for dengue fever or some vague tropical disease that my doctors couldn’t really diagnose (I think they finally said it was dengue with German measles...when I checked out of the hospital) I was living solely on the bags of liquid that went straight to my veins. For one week, my parents were jumping through hoops trying to get me to eat. For someone who may be described as “pleasantly plump” (I hear Heckle and Jeckle giggling in the background) this was completely unprecedented. My mother? Asking me to eat some more? Preposterous! However, due to the nature of whatever bacteria I had in my system, it took me a while to get my appetite back. I remember pizza being ordered, steaming bowls of Marjo’s bulalo being brought in. I have a faint recollection of siopao, or lechon or Skyflakes being brought in, but that could just have been delirium.
I’ve been going on and on and on (just like my Stats classes, where the first 25 minutes are just bull$#!&) but I am finally coming to the real point of this long-winded lunatic discourse. My voice is gone, and my nose has run the NY marathon a thousand times over, but I can still stand, mosey over to the grocery store and get some much needed nutrition. Except that my first stop didn’t end up being the grocery store, but the fantastic Mexican place in our neighborhood. SOUP! The answer was soup!
Actually, my mother didn’t really make soup for me when I was sick. I remember having Skyflakes and Mirinda (yes, Mirinda was still available then) and till now I can’t explain the logic behind that. My mother is always right though, and I pity the person who tries to contradict her. Sometimes, I would be given soft-boiled egg (something that Heckle would ask me to make when she was sick...Jeckle always asked for Jolly Hotdog), or if I could take something more substantial, pospas (that’s arroz caldo to you Tagalog imperialists, hahaha). My mother usually makes it with rice, chicken or strips of beef, and plenty of ginger. My auntie makes another version with...I’m not exactly sure, but I think it’s ground corn. I’ve only had it once in my entire life, in the dark kitchen where I used to hide from the life-sized statues of the Judeos and the Poncio Pilatos, but the taste lingers in the back of my mind.
So Mexican food...there were only two items under soup, and really, you do not want me to go ranting about the chicken soup here. So I stick to the spicy beef soup (caldo de res), which (as I have mentioned previously), is nilaga with ginormous dose of muy caliente (*whip crack*). You can get the red or green version, but I think I prefer the green one (I believe the recipe calls for three tons of cilantro and all the jalapeños on the eastern seaboard) since I feel that the cilantro clears up the nasal passages. I pay maybe a little over eight dollars for a large order, but it lasts for four meals (so if you can do the math...) easily justifiable on a student budget.
I also made a bit of sinampalukang manok, with plenty of sinigang mix and ginger to soothe my throat. Because I’ve been sick for two weeks now, my delicious adobo and chicken liver has been largely ignored. The problem is I can’t get my sinampalukan to be as good as the one made in my Tita Edna’s house. *Makes mental note to send personal message to cousins.*
But for now, I’m just going to chill and concentrate on getting well. People have been commenting on how they liked the new me better (the me without the voice), but then, I’ve never been the type to worry about people liking me, bwahahahahaha!
Postscript on pictures: Can't believe I found a pic of a Mirinda ad (from teacuerdas.com). The Seven Samurai from filmreference.com, the caldo de res from wikimedia, the Skyflakes from afodltd.com.
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