Birthday Dinner

The kids were off to school this morning and Desney was out shopping. I then spent most of the day programming. I actually released yet another (minor) version of my programming project. I wanted to get as much done today to be able to truly enjoy tomorrow. Desney spent all afternoon cooking (dinner and various apple desserts to use up the apples which were originally destined for the International Meal).

As we are going out tomorrow Desney decided to make my birthday dinner for this evening. I actually got to pick everything. She had asked me on Thursday what I wanted. I came up with asparagus (good strong flavour while still fine) with hollandaise sauce; lamb chops (the other bits of lamb are either too thin and dry or too big and chewy) with her now famous garlic sauce (good strong flavour which sticks to my throat); broccoli (goes well with the garlic sauce) and steamed potatoes (even steamed, potatoes are just dried chalk in my mouth). Desney prepared perfect green asparagus steamed just right... not over not under... Delicious! Unfortunately I'm the only member of the family who actually enjoys asparagus. But, of course, that meant all the more for me! The lamb was perfect as well and Desney's garlic cream sauce was... how do I say it? Perfect. As we had lots of asparagus she didn't prepare any other veg. Everyone liked the potatoes. I ate a couple but I just can't enjoy potatoes anymore...

For dessert Desney made my favourite which I generally only get on my birthday. I assume it's a lot of work. Although I never actually sit around and watch her prepare things. The dessert is a sort of chocolate pudding or moelleux, served hot, with lots of Häagen Dazs vanilla ice cream. It was quite good. But certainly not as good as usual.

With dinner I opened a very nice Burgundy (Beaune 1er Cru 2002). I didn't open anything really wonderful as it's just not worth it.

Taste (or lack thereof): My abilities to eat and drink more and more substances are almost more frustrating than satisfying. My taste buds are still pretty much shot to hell and nothing really tastes good. Wine stings ever so slightly but becomes more acidic than fruity way too quickly (within 20 minutes of opening a bottle). Sweets just don't taste sweet. The sweet tastes are probably what come through the least. Salty things taste salty and they seem to stimulate the saliva a bit. But certainly not at a normal level. Spicy flavours come through as spicy but mostly come through as painful in the throat. Any sort of powdery textures (chocolate powder, flour on top of things, ...) just irritates my throat and makes me cough.

The most frustrating of all was probably this evening's dessert. The gastronomic joys of eating involves many aspects of sensual pleasures: sights, tastes, smells, sometimes touch and definitely sensory memory. I can see and feel just fine. My nose seems to work even better than before. This too is quite frustrating. I can tell quite well what something should taste like by what it smells like. What things actually taste like are nothing like what they smell like for me at the moment. Then there's sensory memory. During my acting training, throughout a good portion of my childhood, we worked quite a lot on sensory memory and did so many of those method acting exercises that non-actors find quite funny: slow-motion teeth-brushing while contemplating every aspect; still-frame-by-frame chewing and eating while analysing every aspect; atempting to analyse and describe what everything in life FEELS like down to the most ridiculously minute details. I therefore am actually quite good and remembering what things smelled like, felt like and tasted like. My wife's birthday dessert almost made me cry. I remember perfectly well the combination of sensual pleasures there are in that dessert. The hot and cold mixture. The liquidy yet thick texture of the pudding. The creaminess of the ice cream as it melts and mixes in with the crumbs of the pudding. The chocolate in the pudding which becomes a fudge sauce on the ice cream. The sweet and creamy taste combination. I could look at her dessert, inhale her dessert, close my eyes and remember almost every time she's made it for me. There are so many reasons I fell so deeply in love with this woman and her culinary skills are certainly one of them. Almost none of those sensual pleasures were there in that dessert tonight. The chocolate becomes pasty, the pudding/cake part dries out so quickly in my mouth; the ice cream is creamy without being sweet, ...

It's very frustrating, and sometimes quite depressing, to be able to partake in so much food and drink, while remembering how enjoyable each one of them were, and not be able to actually enjoy it.

Desney worked hard on my birthday dinner, as she always does, and I felt embarassed as to how little I could enjoy it.

I headed off to bed relatively early as we're all getting up early tomorrow morning.