Shock and Jaw

Monday was the first day in more than four weeks that my blender has gone unused. It’ll likely be heading back to work tomorrow, since I’m likely to need to shred a tortilla or two.

I’m very much aware that I’ve been writing a lot more about what I’ve been eating since getting the wires removed. At first, this seemed backwards. I thought that what I ate on the more restrictive liquid diet should have received more attention because it was more abnormal. Having thought about it some more, though, I think there’s a pretty good reason for the way things are. On the liquid diet, I ate pretty much the same thing every day, so there wasn’t a whole lot to say. I’d have several smoothies, a serving of Vega, and a can of soup. Now that I have more options, of course there’s more to write about.

With that said, here’s a summary of today’s meals:

• Breakfast was the usual oatmeal, but today I increased the portion, starting with a cup of dry oats rather than half a cup.
• Lunch was a soy yogurt plus variations on a couple of things I’ve eaten in recent days. One was chinese noodles with miso. I decided to try this as a substitute for ramen after I realized how salty ramen is. The first time I read the label of a package of ramen a few days ago, I was impressed to see that it  had less than 200 milligrams of sodium. However, I took another look yesterday, and I realized that I had read the wrong line, confusing the number for potassium with the number for sodium. In fact, a single serving has over 1000 milligrams of sodium, so I decided to do something a little different today. As with the ramen, I added some silken tofu. This time I used firm silken tofu, which has the advantage of more protein. I had no difficulty swallowing it without chewing. The other half of lunch was a can of refried beans with shredded tortilla bits. I realized after the fact that I ate the refried beans much more quickly and comfortably than I did on Thursday.
• Dinner was a bowl of tamarind lentils from last night.
• Dessert was Purely Decadent soy ice cream with Latchkey Lime Pie, from a recipe of Isa Chandra Moskowitz at Post Punk Kitchen. I actually made it last night, but it finished too late for me to try it. I used a graham cracker crust (Arrowhead Mills brand) because I was looking for something crumbly. It was a great pie, although the texture is a bit more gelatinous and less creamy than a typical key lime pie. This was fine with me, but it’s not something I’d serve to an omnivore to prove that vegan food can be normal. Or maybe I just don’t want to share my pie with anybody. I ate two slices and a couple of tiny slivers, altogether adding up to about a sixth of the pie. For what it’s worth, I think the graham cracker crust worked very nicely. It crumbled in my mouth as I had hoped, and the lime filling infused it with a very nice flavor.
• A while after dessert, I remembered that I had four mangoes, which were on sale at Whole Foods last weekend. I decided to try one which seemed ripe. It was good, but perhaps not as ripe as I should have let it get before eating it without chewing. I tried, with varying degrees of success, to crush little pieces of mango between the roof of my mouth and my tongue. It all went down, but I think it would have been better to wait a little longer for the mango to soften. The remaining three mangoes will wait a bit longer.

Incidentally, I think today is the first day in four weeks that I haven’t eaten any smoothies. I actually like smoothies, but enough to be make me want to have as many as I had while wired, so this is something of a milestone.

Today, I cooked for the first time since the accident. I made Tamarind Lentils from Veganomicon. Of course, I have to throw them in the blender and water them down before I could consume them, but it was nice to have a home-cooked meal, and nice to be able to take control of the sodium level in my food. I think I made enough so that I’ll have some leftovers to eat when I’m actually able to eat again.

Yesterday I stepped on a scale at Bed Bath & Beyond. I weighed 156 pounds. This weight includes my sandals and a few things in my pockets. In any case, this reading doesn’t suggest that I’ve lost any weight yet, so I’m on track to succeed in my challenge. I’m not going to hang a “Mission Accomplished” banner just yet, but it’s a good start.

In a possibly related development, the 28 ounce jar of peanut butter that I opened on Monday is now empty.

I now have five different kinds of dairy-free milk in my refrigerator: soy, rice, almond, hazelnut, and oat. I’ve used soy and rice for a long time, and have tried almond a few times, but hazelnut and oat are new to me. I actually don’t think I’ll buy either again because they’re more expensive and don’t seem any better. Almond milk has really grown on me over the last few days.

Incidentally, I refer to these milks as “dairy-free” rather than the more common “non-dairy” because the latter term has been corrupted by the milk lobby. Unfortunately, “dairy-free” isn’t perfect either, but it hasn’t been explicitly corrupted.

I went grocery shopping earlier and purchased oat and hazelnut milks, several soy yogurts, and a few cans of low sodium soups. The result was that my grocery bags were considerably heavier than the bags I’m used to carrying when I’m not recovering from injury. If I have to stay on the liquid diet even after going wireless next week (and I still have to check with the oral surgeon to see if this is the case), my arms may actually have to get some serious exercise.

After the semester ends (or sooner, if I should catch up with school work), I’ll probably try to start cooking again, even if just a few soups. This will cut down on the amount of liquid I need to carry.

For dinner today, I had a smoothie which I might actually want to make again after I’m able to open my mouth again. Then it won’t be a meal, of course, but it was really quite good. I didn’t write down exact amounts of ingredients, but I’ll call it a Peanut Butter Apple Cinnamon Smoothie. I made it by blending a So Delicious Cinnamon Bun soy yogurt with a few tablespoons of peanut butter and maybe 1/3 cup of applesauce, a little bit of soymilk, and a generous sprinkling of cinnamon. After that was all blended, I added more soymilk until the volume was about three cups, and blended some more.

The smoothie felt as though it was just thin enough that it could pass through the straw, and the flavor was really very good. Something about the flavored soy yogurt made it particularly so.  The peanut butter has plenty of fat and protein, so it was nice and filling, too.

I’ve found my oral surgeon’s assurance, “You’re going to lose some weight” replaying over and over in my head over the last couple of days. I’m not exactly sure why. I wasn’t particularly disturbed by the idea of losing a few pounds. It may well have just been his level of confidence in his prediction that made it stuck with me like this. It also reminds of the nurse last week saying that I’m “already such a little guy” (which did bother me). By now I’ve come to see these remarks as the basis for a challenge to avoid losing weight while I’m wired. I haven’t weighed myself since two weeks before the accident, but I’ll aim for the most recent measurement I have: 155 pounds. As a rule, I’ll try to refrain from doing anything particularly stupid, like consuming to the point of feeling sick or drinking vegetable oil from a cup.

It’s been a couple of days since my supply of Vega arrived, but it’s already changed my life for the better. I already mentioned that it allowed me to go a few hours without eating while I taught back-to-back sections yesterday. A Vega meal replaces at least a couple of smoothies, and it offers more nutritional balance. It’s also a major convenience in the mornings because it’s one meal for the day that I don’t need to prepare before leaving for the office. The taste isn’t great, but it’s at least tolerable. My container of soy protein powder has gone back into the cabinet, so I don’t feel like I’m living off of a monoculture anymore. When I was deciding whether to try this stuff, I had a little bit of trouble coming to terms with the price tag, but so far, it’s definitely worth it.

Today was a big day for me. For the first time since my accident, I taught my three sections. I knew that my speech wouldn’t be perfectly normal, and so it still might be hard for students to hear me if the room were full of chatty students. I also knew that it might be hard for students whose first language wasn’t English. To resolve these issues, I prepared detailed notes for the lesson and told the students that they could take them and leave if they wanted to. I expected that since most of my students were only taking the course to get into business or medical school, most of them would exercise this option. This would have the dual effect of giving the students another way of getting my lesson, and keeping the background noise in the classroom at a reasonable level. My expectation proved correct, as I had only six students among the three sections stay the whole time. Many of those who left didn’t even bother to take the notes.

I’m always a little tired after teaching three sections in one day, and today is no exception. Other than that, though, I feel great.  Less than a week ago, I struggled to get even just a word or two out of my mouth, and I was starting to lose hope that I’d be able to teach today. To have been able to get up and teach for four hours under these circumstances is a huge psychological victory that low attendance isn’t going to take away from me.

In all fairness, I owe some credit for today’s success to Vega. I teach two consecutive sections with only 10 minutes in between, which means that I have to go about three hours without eating. On a liquid diet, that would ordinarily be very difficult for me, but after my Vega breakfast, it was not so bad.