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The ice cap is receding.
Not the ice cap/s. Our personal one.
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You wouldn’t know to look at it, but temperatures these past couple of days have been positively balmy, so the melt is on – for now.
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The lane out to the state route is a quagmire.
It’s a messy time, but I have taken a few pictures here and there.
However, I will first offer images I took earlier in the month and never got around to posting.
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Bright willows on a grey day.
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This must have been the day we went to Vermont in search of items not available at the Greenwich Hannaford’s.
We may need to do another run soon as those items are still not in stock.
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It is absolutely uncanny how every time I find a food item which either better suits my digestion or is more pleasing to my taste – it promptly becomes unavailable.
This happens over and over. And over.
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It really isn’t that I’m fussy. Boarding school cures you of that. There was a time when I could eat anything.
Almost anything. I’ll come back to that.
Around the age of 16, I developed digestive issues.
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This may,or not, have been the result of a flirtation with anorexia, although at the time I’d never heard of it.
Finding myself back in England after 6 years in Asia, suddenly I had access to all the goodies I’d missed out East.
Candy bars, milk and cream, potato crisps etc. And at boarding school, you got stodge.
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In those days I had an insatiable appetite and filled myself up with bread and butter.
Somehow I’d persuaded myself I was one of those people who can eat anything without gaining weight.
The expanda waist of my uniform skirt convinced me it was so, until the summer holiday came around and shock, horror, my clothes were tight.
The women in my family all struggled with weight issues. I was horrified to find myself the same.
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Returning to school after the summer, I decided the thing to do was avoid all fattening food, which was almost everything we were offered.
No bread, no potato, no pudding.
Before long, I’d lost a great deal of weight, close to 40 pounds, I believe, to the point where one of the not-so-holy sisters admonished me:
“You will have stomach problems later!”
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She stood glaring at me, but as soon as her back was turned, I shoveled my food off onto a neighbour.
At the end of that year, I went one last time to Asia where I found that I no longer had a tolerance for spicy food. In fact I was quite sick, but leaving school, followed by my move to the States broke the pattern of my obsessive diet.
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In the States, I adjusted to living with my aunt and uncle and my aunt’s mother-in-law.
Anorexia having lost its clutch, I still fretted over my diet, endlessly counting calories as I re-gained a little weight.
By age 21, I weighed about 140 pounds – 10 stone. At 5′ 8″, this was reasonable, but when I applied to work for Pan American Airways, I was told that I was too heavy to work in uniform and was relegated to an office in a hangar.
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Out of the office window I watched traffic going to the terminals and I was miserable, but not long after I was interviewed by BOAC and offered a job in passenger service – in uniform.
The following year I was diagnosed with thyroid nodes and had most of the gland removed. I was lucky that it was not malign, but I have been on a thyroid supplement ever since.
The stresses of the ensuing years took their toll on my digestive system and in 1992 I became vegetarian, further limiting food choices.
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Digestive health specialists over the years subjected me to a variety of tests with no less than three different diagnoses, but in recent years I’ve eliminated dairy, gluten, soy, citrus, garlic and all spices based on the effect they have. on me.
This is why I am always pleased to find a choice that suits me and why I am frustrated that it promptly becomes unavailable!
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Earlier on, I mentioned that boarding school had cured me of being fussy, before the anorexia episode.
Until that first boarding school in Vietnam, I’d really only ever eaten my mother’s food, or whatever I chose in a restaurant.
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There was one time when I was taken by my parents to a dinner party and faced with cold consomme. I still shudder at the memory, but apart from that, I’d never faced challenges at the dinner table.
Until my first meal at school. Mostly, it was boiled rice which was boring but innocuous. It was the additional bits and pieces that were a problem.
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What I’d identified as egg turned out to be soy. It was rubbery and unpalatable but I got used to that.
One day we were served with some sort of root vegetable. It was bitter-tasting and consisted mostly of tough fibre. It was so foul, I could not swallow it. We had to remain at the table until we ate, so I waited for a chance to throw it out the nearest window.
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There was always a flock of birds beneath that particular window.
Once in a while there would be something more interesting on offer, though I can’t specifically remember it.
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One day I was excited at the prospect of something that had been cooked in batter. In my experience, that was always good.
Imagine my shock, biting into it and discovering that I was eating brains.
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Months later, I’d been transferred to a school in Cambodia where food was not just bad but scarce. Luckily, I had access to street-sellers and I lived on deep-fried shrimp cakes.
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Refectory food consisted of a little rice and broth with chicken bones. Like Oliver, I got in trouble once for asking for more!
On rare occasions, we had a bit of pork but I could never enjoy it because I could still hear the squeals of the poor pig being slaughtered.
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It really is a wonder I didn’t turn veg sooner.
The first morning of a visit to Laos, I was awakened by the lowing of a cow. Looking out, not long after, I was appalled by the most hideously gory sight of a man up to his elbows in blood that he was scooping from the corpse of the poor animal.
All day we smelled it cooking. Ghastly.
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Yet I have never been without a meal of some sort, never felt the pangs of hunger, other than self-inflicted.
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Boarding school was detestable, but I am not ungrateful for having experienced those years.
It is my firm belief that you learn more from adversity that you ever do from the good times.
The list of things that you have ‘eliminated’ is large! Add being vegetarian to that, and you really must struggle to enjoy something hearty and tasty. But I can see why you didn’t like some of the food served up to you in those boarding schools.
Best wishes, Pete.
I think I’d be living on Apple Strudel and custard if I were you, but no, you don’t do dairy do you!
I discovered “So Delicious -dairy free-coconut milk, yogurt alternative” that is really yummy! If you can eat coconut milk, I hope you can find it to try! Thanks so much for your interesting posts!! Deb ❤️
Boarding school definitely taught me to eat what’s on the table as well. I had never heard of liver cookies until I went to boarding school. And while it didn’t sound really nice, I ended up loving it. But after boarding school, I never ate it again – it makes me think that I probably only ate it because it was on the table (and there was no other alternative). Here in SA (which is known for its meat eaters), there are not many vegetarian options. But if you shop with care, I’m sure you can conjure up delicious vegetarian dishes in your own kitchen.