Food, Food, FOOD, OHMYGODGETOUTOFMYWAY!

Ok, I'm officially tired of soup and smoothies. Mark your calendars. It will be a new national holiday.

The first week or so weren't too bad: mostly my mouth hurt so bad that the idea of putting anything in there other than the smooth, creamy texture of either warm soup or a cool smoothie was wildly unappetizing and unpleasant. Besides, I like veggies and soups and hey I'm eating healthy foods. This doesn't seem so bad at all.

Ahem.

I think I'll be starting a new thread of blog entries here. They will be called "What I Wanted; What I Got". Maybe you can see where this is going. Let me give you an example.

Tonight:
What I Wanted: a foccacia sandwich with fresh mozarella, basil and tomatoes, with artichoke hearts and basalmic vinegar.
What I Got: soup.

Seriously, I am going to try and lose as much weight as I can while recovering, so that I can eat myself into a stupor when this is all done, and still retain my girlish figure (coquettish giggle.) The creativity has started. I've already mentioned the pizza and cookie experiments. When my bands were off I'd break off small bits of tasty food - smoked salmon! bacon! - and work them past my teeth. Then all I had to do was swallow them whole. This was often accompanied by shaking my head around and trying to knock the food into place from the outside. Two words: choking hazard. Two more words: looks ridiculous. The M&Ms worked quite well, however, as did the raspberry sorbet cut with a little bit of red wine to make it less thick for the straw. Bliss!

Yesterday in desperation I jammed some cornbread into my now-banded mouth just to have texture. (Had there been spackled plaster lying about I might've given that a whirl too.) Cornbread is a Bad Choice in that it breaks apart like a multiple warhead missle once in your mouth, and then you have to spend the rest of the meal trying to flush it out with your bag o' water, which is even less sexy that having to eat out of a bag while everyone else uses, say, a plate and a... fork and...oh heavens! Their teeth.

I have decreed though, that while I appreciate folks bringing over food, they are no longer allowed to bring soup. Soup? We got soup. Bought some stock in Campbell's too right away. (Oooh, no pun intended!) What I realized was that I needed to see other kinds of foods besides soup, so that I could hold onto the dream that someday I'd be eating something besides soup. That I hadn't enteretd some alternate soup universe where nothing but soup existed. Yes, I will mumble out cracks about how you are being mean by eating Real Food (tm) in front of me, but do not bring me soup! Seriously!

Wow, I suddenly have the most overwhelming urge to claw all that hardware right out of my mouth right now. So...hungry....