Imaginary Eating

I love food blogs, especially with lots of photos of finished, ready-to-eat food. I love them because I can imagine eating everything on the plate in the photos, but I also know I can't eat 99% of the foods because there always something in it that's on my no-eat list.

I tell folks the list of foods I can eat and enjoy eating can be written on a 4x5 Postit Note, one page. That's it, and I don't have to write small either. All because the Gastroenterologists suggested avoiding some classes of foods but still experiment now and then, about once a week.

The other problem is that I have almost no sense of smell. I was born with a deviated septum and at 21 in 1970 I had it removed. During the surgery, however, they severed the almost all of the olfactory nerves from the nose, which left me with very little sense of smell, only very strong odors.

It's left me for the time being to stop cooking, especially some foods I love, like pizza, roast chicken, kitchen sink soup, bread, anything with eggs, pot pies with extra vegetables, and so on down the list. Right now I live on snacks 4-5 times a day, which is a lot of protein drinks and snacks.

I love and hate grocery shopping because I love to browse but know I can't buy much because I can't it or won't eat it. Sometimes I just buy some special food, often fresh fruit, just to look at it for a few days before throwing it away.

Yeah, a waste of food, but it teaches me discipline because I know from previous food experiments with these foods my digestive system has adverse reactions in either extreme, something I can never predict.

I can't eat food samples at grocery stores. You know they over those small cups with freshly made dishes? Those. I can't even eat one of those, some, usually spicy, produces adverse reactions later. It's why I have a anger about myself and a fear of food.

But it doesn't change the reality I love food blogs with photos. I could easily eat myself into oblivion. And on top of that I had to stop eating my favorite food, chocolate. Yeah, it's only for awhile, but it's hard knowing just one piece of chocolate would make me feel good and not eat.

Anyway, just something in passing I thought while looking at food blogs.