I can't taste but I can dream of tasting

I'm in Kate-hell right now. The cold has knocked out my taste buds. I can't taste anything. I made very strong coffee this morning and it could have been chamomile tea. I smeared apricot preserves on my toast out of habit before I realized that it was just for looks since I couldn't taste the damn stuff.

And two days ago, I made intense vanilla ice cream with the intention of affogatto-ing it (word mutilation comes with the territory when I'm sick) but it is going to have to wait until my sense of smell and taste return for its espresso bath and in the meantime I know it will become less ideal in texture (homemade ice cream without all the guar gum glop in it is best as soon as it firms up in the freezer; after that it starts to form ice crystals and get kind of stiff instead of creamy).

Rather than sit out this period of sense-loss I've been planning for its return. I've been reading back postings of The Traveler's Lunchbox which is such a lovely food blog. And I have been organizing some recipes I want to try while the season is right. I have a load and a half of swiss chard in my garden, a significant quantity of cherry tomatoes and it is still Red Haven peach season. So the menu for when I return to the world of taste goes like this:

• Swiss chard stuffed ravioli with fresh tomato sauce (which I clipped from, I think, Food and Wine magazine)
• Cherry tomato confit over fresh herbed ricotta (in today's NY Times--the link will only be good for a week so print out the recipe if it looks good to you)
• Peaches roasted with brown sugar and basil (again in today's Times)
  

Sounds like a dreamy way to consume the waning days of summer, yes?

On a positive note, and one I think Jillian will appreciate, this cold has got me out of eating in Frankenmuth. I still have to go up there tonight (we're selling our cabin on Lake Huron to some folks who live in Saginaw and the closing is taking place in Frankenmuth this evening) but I will get out of the food portion of the visit. I do plan to try and save up enough energy to track down the treasures buried beneath the kitch--specifically something in the line of Jillian's taco Christmas ornament, and maybe a little more yarn since we all know that yarn is key to recovering from sickness.

I have been knitting and reading a great deal in all the time I've saved by not cooking. Both can be done while lying on the couch and since I'm still feeling kind of weak (yea, that's the reason the house is a sty....) that's where I want to be. My Ribby Cardigan is getting close to the point where I attempt to attach the sleeves to the body and try and knit the whole thing, from the armpits to the neck, in the round. And last night I finished a wonderful book: Making an Exit : A Mother-Daughter Drama with Alzheimer's, Machine Tools, and Laughter by Elinor Fuchs (whose Death of Character book was one I actually enjoyed reading while in grad school). The writing in the memoir is wonderful--precise, funny, moving.

So now I am off to another day of child-neglect, couch lolling, reading The Historian, and dreaming of tasting again.