We love soups!

While we were both home sick and recovering, we spent a lot of time preparing our all-round favorite food - soup, in all shapes and forms:

Ritesh's first home made chicken soup, entirely made from scratch, hours of work, but the best broth ever

the de-boned chicken and veggies that were boiled in the broth

and the horseradish sauce to eat with the veggies (right) plus a German-style cucumber salad (left) - Ritesh outdid himself that night!

Ritesh's famed home made miso soup (if you think miso soup is simple and easy, think again...)

and our first home made borscht, from a recipe 'from a kitchen in Moscow' that we found on some Ukrainian website. Very nice recipe, but it looks like our beets were more golden than ruby. And we made so much of it, I'm borschted out for the foreseeable future. Plus I don't think I'm that big a fan of dill, coming to think of it...

Godiva sucks

So I went to Godiva the other day in the hopes of finding a nice box of chocolates for our London office - they were so kind and generous when I was there, I wanted to send something back. Not that I particularly like Godiva but they're right across the street and I figured I'd find something decent. Not so. None of their gift boxes looked even vaguely interesting, all just the same lame old stuff. They did have some individual salted caramels though, and if you remember my salted caramel phase from earlier this year, you'll probably guess that I had to get a couple to try (that's the hearts in the picture below). And because they had some special promotion going, I got an extra chocolate for free, so I picked a dark Grand Marnier truffle for Ritesh.
But alas, when we tried them at home, what a disappointment. Not sure if Godiva just really sucks as much as Ghirardelli, or if my palate has changed so much from a few sugar-free weeks, but I had one bite and hated it. It wasn't salty enough, just super-sweet, so sweet in fact that it left a nasty, almost bitter aftertaste - enough to keep me away from Godiva for good.

If you're into salted caramels, the ones to get are the award-winning grey salt ones from Fran's Chocolates in the Seattle. I made Ritesh bring some home when he was up there for a conference right after we came back from Mumbai, and they were truly amazing (sorry for the blurry picture - I must have been in a real rush to try one):


But forget Godiva.

And I think the London office is going to get a bunch of bacon chocolate...

Padma Lakshmi

I just found out that Padma Lakshmi also has endometriosis, by way of several articles (here's the one from Newsweek) discussing her creation of the Endometriosis Foundation of America, which aims to foster awareness and encourage research into the disease which affects 5-10% of all women and as yet has no cure. Poor Padma apparently has it way worse than me, she had four surgeries already, and her first one alone took four hours (mine was just over an hour and a half). Plus she's had it since she was 16, and wasn't diagnosed until 20 years later, when her symptoms had become pretty unmanageable, while I've only had it for a couple of years and was diagnosed pretty much right away. So when she talks about how debilitating it is and how embarrassed she was to talk about it, I may think I can relate to it but really, I probably can't.

The Endometriosis Diet

So here's the deal about this new diet of mine. Since my endometriosis surgery, I've been following a special endo diet which is supposed to help prevent the (very likely) recurrence of the illness. There is ample explanation of the science behind that online (plus my Chinese herbalist had been telling me all along), so I was ready to buckle down and do it in spite of any sacrifices required. The diet at first seems really restrictive - no sugar, no dairy, no soy, no wheat, no processed foods - and I was bracing myself for a lot of suffering and deprivation. I had gotten myself Carolyn Levett's Endometriosis Cookbook online but it being an e-book, the print-out wasn't pretty and didn't look like anything to write home about. But honestly, this little Australian book has blown my mind! Every single thing I've made from it so far hasn't just been acceptable in a restricted-diet kind of way but absolutely fantastic. I am really, really impressed. This is not just a great cook book for people with endo, but a great cookbook, period. It's available at www.endo-resolved.com.

Here's the first thing I made from it - just a nice fruit salad, but with a dollop of fresh home-made dairy-free yogurt made from pine nuts, of all things - delicious!

Here's the pine nut yogurt in its jar - the creamy yogurt is on top, the whey at the bottom

and here's the fruit salad again, just so you can see evidence of the fact that I finally invested in a melon baller! Oh, and the green stuff is not parsley but chopped fresh mint.Recipe No. 2: an amazing lemon-garlic pasta with grilled veggies. It's hard to describe just how fabulous this was. So super-simple but very intensely flavorful. Gave it five stars.

the veggies wanted to sit on the stove for a bit before going into the oven...

Recipe No. 3: Grilled peppers and onions salad with a Nicoise olive and caper dressing. Great appetizer. Another five stars. Recipe No. 4: Oh my. This was so good. This is brown-rice pasta with a fresh Vietnamese pesto made with sweet Thai basil, cilantro, lime, fresh roasted peanuts, rock salt, a pinch of cinnamon and a good amount of fish sauce. Five and a half stars. Absolutely incredible.

A close up of the Vietnamese pesto...
Recipe No. 5: a banana pie for Ritesh. This is a raw, vegan pie with a walnut-almond-date crust (ok, I smuggled a bit of hazelnut butter in there too) and a banana-date topping. Should have used more fresh fruit on top, but we were low on strawberries, and the nectarines weren't quite ripe yet. And the topping didn't quite gel enough because I used too much lemon juice for the amount 0f agar-agar, so it was my fault, not the recipe's. But this rocked anyway. Definitely way more flavor than any old wheat-and-sugar based pie.
I also made a raw Italian pesto soup from the book but forgot to take a picture. But there'll be plenty more to come - I'm loving this book so much I have half a mind to cook my way trough the entire thing.

Surprise Package from NY!

Look what I got in the mail this week! A surprise get-well package from one of my oldest friends (who's soon to be a tenured professor - yay for Rogie!)! I had no idea it was from him until I opened it, because it was sent from Colorado. He must have ordered it online. But how did he manage to include that hand-written note? Hmm.... mystery. I did call him to thank him, but forgot to ask. He's coming to visit in August so note to self, ask Rogie how he pulled that off!

And here's what was inside - it was a true care package if ever I've seen one: chocolate covered pretzels, Mighty Leaf tea, Southwest flavored orzo, basil pesto and a lime syrup that you can do a million things with. Very, very nice selection, and really made my day, thanks so much, Rogie! Ritesh and I got started on the chocolate covered pretzels right away - they were brown-rice syrup sweetened and not only certified organic, but Vermont certified organic! That must mean something, and we were very impressed. And boy were they tasty! A real treat...

The Big Day

Sorry to keep going on about pre-surgery and post-surgery, but the surgery was kind of a big deal around here. Plus I've changed what I eat since that day, so it feels like there really has been a dividing line, a distinct before and after... more on the after part coming up!

The Golden State

The Golden State is a new joint on Fairfax devoted to showcasing a vast array of odd and exotic (and overpriced) beers, as well as a smaller selection of hot dogs, sandwiches and salads to go along with it. They also have great fries and dipping sauces. I loved my sandwich - the best BLT I recall eating, ever - and liked my wine fair enough. I don't really like beer, what with my dad being a Master Brewer and all, I got saturated before I reached my teens...

This was a little while ago, when Przemek (left) was in town to screen his movie at the Polish Film Festival. Unfortunately, we missed the movie but we did manage to catch up with him and Greg and Phinney at Golden State afterwards...

Rakish Desires Cont.

A couple more pre-surgery indulgences: a mini sized chocolate cheesecake, and a mini chocolate cupcake, both from Whole Foods and pretty disappointing. These were apparently created to look good, not taste good.

This one is the exact opposite - a somewhat plain and unassuming-looking rhubarb crumble that tastes fantastic! Made this one from Simon's reliably fabulous recipe again...

Rakish Desires

I wanted to regale you with a couple of these beauties... a very classy macaronade at the Little Next Door, with Andrea, pre-surgery

and a supremely indulgent raw and vegan chocolate truffle cake from Cru, at home, with Ritesh

... before pulling a 180 degree turn and presenting my new inspirational role model, Ukrainian yoga master (contortionist is more like it) Andrey Lappa. I am attempting to learn his rather challenging Dance of Shiva and have been reading up on him a little, and here's what he has to say about the theme of my blog:

Food preoccupation or appetite is the result of old rakish desires and the absence of the will to humbleness. It also be connected with the unconscious striving «to tune out» from stress influences and become distracted by the sensations of eating. This is usually connected with the psychic overloads of a modern style of life.

Ho hum. Spoken like the true ascetic-living-in-retreat-in-the-Himalayas-six-months-out-of-the-year kind of guy that he is. But truth is, he has a point. Also, as it happens, my post-surgery self has been a very conscious and sparing eater and doing very well without rakish desires for sugar, cake or ice cream or anything of the sort, thank you very much. Now the question is how I will fare once I re-enter the stressed-out and overloaded work force on Friday....

Tulips and Jasmine

Some very pretty get-well flowers from Ritesh...

and a very cool get-well bag from Nady - this is a super eco-friendly and sustainable purse handmade in the Philippines from recycled rice bags. Can't beat that! Thanks, Nady and Ritesh!

The Five Things We Cannot Change

1. Everything changes and ends.
2. Things do not always go according to plan.
3. Life is not always fair.
4. Pain is a part of life.
5. People are not loving and loyal all the time.

Thank god for Buddhism and its insights. It's been a trying week, and lord knows I've needed them.

My surgery finally happened and was successful, as they say, meaning they did what they set out to do and it all went well and without complications. It was last Wednesday at 7am and was over at 9am. I started coming to around noon, and around 3pm they had finally figured out which anti-nausea medication to give me. I remember being told in England that today's anesthesia doesn't make you nauseous anymore so not sure what happened there. Maybe I'm just sensitive. Anyway, I was bandaged up and discharged at 5pm, exactly 12h after we got there. So far so good.

What I wasn't prepared for was what followed, the sucky, lonely recovery time at home. Ritesh was very busy. He continued going to work during the day and visiting his dad during the evening. The pops is doing well, btw, but the better he gets the more company he wants, so they have him covered around the clock. Ritesh's brother is there from morning to early afternoon, the mom from afternoon to early evening, and Ritesh from early evening to midnight. Ritesh did spend the surgery day with me at the hospital but starting the day after he went back to his usual routine and I found myself alone at home, loaded up on painkillers, having a hard time thinking straight and focusing on that Indian novel I was trying to read, let alone moving around. Same on Friday, day 2 after surgery. My parents called on Friday and wanted to thank Ritesh for taking such good care of me, assuming of course he had taken time off work and visiting the Dad. I didn't have the heart to tell them I was alone, so I lied and said Ritesh was just out grocery shopping. He did do some grocery shopping on Saturday, after catching up on some sleep until 2pm (poor guy is exhausted) and before heading back south to visit the pops. It doesn't help that the mom calls to ask when he's coming to the hospital as soon as he's in the door. Honest to god, I've come to resent the sound of his phone ringing. Can't they let the guy have some peace, and let him take care of his wife? He did also cook me dinner twice this week, and took me out for Chinese food around the corner once, which was nice. The rest of the time I've been eating leftovers and lots of fruits. Not so bad I guess. I've lost seven pounds so far, since the beginning of my bronchitis.

Now I'm not one of those people who can't stand to be alone and always need someone around. Quite the contrary, I really enjoy having time alone to re-group and think and read and just putter around the house and do my thing. But as I discovered, that is quite different from being in isolation 22h out of the day after surgery when you're fragile and in pain (did I mention that Ritesh has been sleeping on the futon in the back for three weeks so as not to catch my bronchitis?) I did try to keep myself busy, speaking to friends and family on the phone, reading a couple of books and watching a couple of movies and generally doing things I shouldn't be doing like making my bed, loading and emptying the dish washer, driving myself to the doctor because one of the sutures is bulging and hurting so much more than the other, and doing some grocery shopping myself. But really, I've come to my limits. I've learned that when you've had surgery, you need someone there with you to take care of you, and not in some half-assed way. You can't really do this on your own. Looking back on it now, I think it would have been smarter if I had had the surgery in London after all. My heart aches just thinking about it. Delia is at home anyway, she cooks food anyway, and she and the kids would have been great, spirited company. It would have been a very different experience. As it is, things have gotten so bad that I'm actually missing work and can't wait to go back next Friday. And that I'm seeking refuge in the time-honored tenets of Buddhism. The five realities above couldn't be more appropriate, and I find them really helpful when resentment rears its ugly head.

Ritesh is now home sick himself, not with my bronchitis, mind you, but with some cold that he caught at work or at the hospital. How ironic. Anyway, I'll go cut up some fruit for breakfast.

One week down, 9 more days to go.

Yay for the pops!

The good news is that while I'm languishing in limbo, the pops has been making strides. STRIDES, I tell you. He has been gaining strength in his hands and can now HOLD A PEN and WRITE which he does with abandon and which is very, very exciting to us. It would be hard to overrate the importance of being able to communicate. He himself is so happy about it it's hard to stop him. The night nurse reported he was up at 2am writing the other night. What was he writing, you ask? "I tried and tried, but I just couldn't read his handwriting" she said. He's writing on a white board and when he runs out of space, he wipes it clean and starts over, so we'll never know what was on his mind that night. But what he writes when Ritesh is around is all comprehensible, and he says the pops is very with it, if a little iffy on short term memory. Ritesh does give him little quizzes every now and then, just to keep tabs on his cognitive function, and this week, the pops had no problem recalling who Obama was but had no recollection of the previous president. Oh merciful mind. I wish we could all just forget about that guy.

But the most exciting this is: THE POPS CAN EAT! YAY FOR THE POPS! He passed a swallow test yesterday, some slivers of ice, some apple sauce and a graham cracker, and so today he got some more apple sauce and some mashed up veggies and soup and, believe it or not, mashed up teriyaki chicken. I've been looking forward to the pop's first meal for weeks and am really bummed I missed it (me an my bronchitis are still staying as far away from him as possible). We had done a lot of speculating on what he would want as his first meal after three months of intravenous protein goo, and finally Ritesh asked him the question and he said what he missed most and wanted first was daal bhat, i.e. Indian lentil daal with rice. Instead, he got teriyaki chicken, poor guy, but I'm sure the mom is whipping up some daal as we speak and he will get it soon - this all happened so fast! It was totally unexpected but I'm convinced and keep saying that him being able to eat real food will make a huge difference in his well-being and recovery.

Now please let there not be another set back. He's still in the ICU and I guess the next step is discharging him, again, to the rehab place.

Cranky

It's been one endless miserable week. One thing I've tried these last couple of days to help heal my bronchitis is taking gentle strolls on the beach. I figured the salty, humid air could only do good things for those poor, inflamed bronchioli. I can't really say that it caused noticeable improvement but it was nice to get out of the house for something other than work. (Yes, I went into work most days. And I am not resenting having had to go in at all. No siree. Staying home is for pussies. And I just got promoted again and am expected to show my dedication. So there.)

This is looking south on Santa Monica beach, towards Venice:
And this is looking north, towards the Santa Monica pier and Malibu:

It's been a week and a half time and I'm very ready for this to be over. The surgery was indeed postponed to next week, although I'm still not sure that I'll be ok then. Apparently, you not only have to be able to breathe during surgery, but also to abstain from coughing afterwards, what with all the abdominal incisions that need to heal. So we'll see - will talk to the doctor on Monday.

At least it's not the swine flu

So it looks like the surgery will have to be postponed - my bronchitis/flu thing has gotten way out of hand and is not responding to antibiotics. I'm coughing up a lung and then some every hour or so and have the mother of all sinus infections to go along with it, as well as an ear infection (it takes having had one to understand just how painful these are), as well as a low-grade fever, total fatigue and stabbing aches and pains all over my body. I was supposed to go into work this weekend to prepare for being out for a couple of weeks starting Wednesday, but there's no way I could go in, and there's no way I can have surgery being this sick. So God knows what's going to happen. Hopefully they can schedule me in for the following week.

Doctors

My surgery date is now set for next Wed, May 6. I'm not going back to London for it, although I would have loved to. I turns out that although the surgeon's fees are so much cheaper there, once you add in the hospital fees (which here are covered by my insurance) it ends up costing about the same. Add to that all the hassle and the jet lag and the recovery at a friend's house - I didn't really want to be a bother to Delia who has her hands full with her three boys. So instead, I'll have to be a bother to poor Ritesh who insisted that he'd rather do double duty taking care of his dad and taking care of me than having to worry about me on the other side of the Atlantic. Thanks, love...

So instead of the lovely doctor on Harley Street, my surgery will be done by a great doctor in Santa Monica who is an expert in the procedure I'm going to have, committed to being minimally invasive, and who is supremely personable and reassuring, all of which has contributed to him being chosen for Best Doctors in America and Top Doctors since the 1990s. This is him:
He is not within my insurance network and therefore several thousand dollars more expensive than the creepy doctor at UCLA I was with before, but I'm at peace with it. At least I can trust him. I hope :) .

This may be a bit of a cheap shot, but just for contrast, here's Dr. Evil at UCLA who wanted to do a medically unnecessary and outdated procedure on me and just wouldn't back down in spite of second opinions from other doctors with a combined 50 years more experience than him.
This is also a doctor who makes you wait somewhere between 1h and 1.5 h at every appointment, no matter if you're his first appointment of the day. It's because of guys like him that we were warned by a family friend, retired MD herself and professor emeritus at UCLA, that the certain university hospital in question has a reputation for doing unnecessary surgeries to bring in revenue and that I should get a second opinion. Which thankfully I was able to do. But I'm still not quite over my experience with this guy. It left a really bad aftertaste and on some level I feel I should report him so he doesn't do this to other patients. But if the whole system is dysfunctional, what point is it to denounce one individual? I mean, this place is called the Ronald Reagan Medical Center - what else can you expect? Should have known to stay away.

Anyways.

Meanwhile, I'm actually out sick with a weird bronchial infection - it feels like bronchitis, but the doctor says its bacterial. I hope the antibiotics will take care of it or that it will at least have run its course by Wednesday. I'd hate to have to postpone the surgery...