Shall we always land back here? With the crunchy, watery little bois eager to be salted and sugared and tasted until the vibe is right? May I not move past them to seared somethings and gooey tidbits? Well, no. Not yet. Maybe not ever? It’s not me, I promise. It’s my gallbladder.

See, the problem is bile storage and usage, and bile is used to emulsify fats, making them easier to process (look, this is as good as I’ve got right now, I REFUSE to look it up again in middle of writing this. It has been too many months since I’ve been here, I need to ride the writing wave, not surf the information web¹). My gallbladder has stored for too long and too greedily, and genetics plus indeterminate FACTORS has led to my gallbladder filling itself with tiny little stones, that are not so tiny and make the process of getting the bile from liver (?) to intestines (?) all that bit more tricksy. Any time I have fat, the gallbladder has to squeeze out some of the bile it’s been storing for that very purpose, and all the stones (Rasputin being the main villain, measuring a whopping 20 mm before THE THING THAT HAPPENED happened) make the squeezing more of a struggle (like milking a cow with marbles in its udders²) and lead to some of the stones getting stuck in the bile duct. A literal real pain. Like, REAL PAIN. I’m telling you. It’s really, really painful. Even on morphine man, it’s, wowza.

Anyway, I love fat. Big fan. Big big fan. And Sohla is not an idiot. She also loves fat. Appreciates what it does for a dish, acknowledges its importance in texture and creation of different physic adaptations in a sauce, baked good etc etc. So doing the old taste taste taste, cook a meal that maybe only I can eat because it might not be vegan, write about it, take a few pics, well, it’s not the safest choice for me right now. Not till I get this bad boy out (not Rasputin, Rasputin is no longer with us, after WHAT HAPPENED, RIP to a real one) and then I’ll have to build up my other organs to be able to deal with fat in a normal, non-laxative way (I’ve been led to believe that sans gallbladder, the liver and intestines have a more lassez-faire³ approach to emulsifying the fat and containing waste product, so I’m not going to try to concoct any homemade mayonaisse or ranch dressing fries until I am certain I have steadied that flow and/or have a really good adult nappy fit).

All of which is to say that I wanted some tasty food that didn’t have fat in it, and I remembered something that Sohla gave me oh so long ago: that bitching-ass dressing. Sprinkle salt till it’s savory, then dash on an acid (this time it was a combo of the brine from that preserved lemon jar and some cider vinegar), put on some sugar, and finish with MSG. No fat, but damn tasty. There are so many other reasons why food is currently tricky for me, which I may get to at some point, but making what’s in front of me taste good AND feel safe is super important pour moi rn.

The ingredients started with cucumber as a base, then I julieened some carrot (can we all get one of these mandolin gloves as standard when buying any sharp boyos? Again with feeling safe + not scalping the palm and/or fingertips? Love it love it⁴) and pulled apart a half a bag of leaves. What else was in there? Oh yeah, I made sure we had gotten fresh parsley (again, tasty and safe), so that was a winner, brightens everything, and if you can spot any other ingredients in the bowl, then send me an e-mail? Comment below? Feel real observant? I can’t remember… Oh wait, I did also season and partially smush some chickpeas, because sometimes when I add chickpeas to a salad they just seem so round and hard they don’t coaleste - coelaste? - co-al-e-st? - coelese? with the rest of the bowl. So that’s what I remember putting in the salad to b dressed as Sohla suggested and as I have adopted as a go to for months and months now.

But hark, you say, what’s that flat round beige thing? Something delicious? It looks fried and fatty and like it would make a humble gallstone like Rasputin explode!⁵ Well, it wasn’t fatty and nothing exploded but my tastebuds (Pow pow pow airhorn). It was pearl barley, bitches!

First, I put it in the rice cooker with a stock cube (I do need to incorporate little bits of fat, and even cheapo stock cubes can elevate a meal). I intended to then crisp some in the oven like I had the quinoa for Sohla’s Green Goddess Salad (sans oil and avec fingers crossed) but I put in way too much water, so the cooked pb way a lil sloppy. So, I put it in the pan instead, and when I did, I was brought to pancake mountain.⁶

The pan was non stick, the moisture was starchy from the cooking process with a teeny bit of fat from the stock cube. The layer was thick, so I closed up any bare patches, turned the heat low and just let it dry out. I just left it. Kept an eye as I moved from ingredient to sink to chopping board, but mostly just left it. I checked a corner with a silicone spatula. That edge was crisp, it came off clean, that edge didn’t. I rotated the pan, I left it. I watched the bubbles. I left it longer. I loosened all the base from the pan. I could feel the clean release it gave, the potential crisp skin. It was heavy though. The spatula I had was not wide enough. The wooden utensils also too narrow and both together too awkward. I harkened back. I hiked a little. I brought forward that one day that I made two or three pancakes from a six-egg batter.

I flipped.

It worked.

I left the other side to dry out too, to crisp its starchy membrane and darken its pale mush to a beige delicacy. There are many imporvements to be made - hotter to get more of a crisp, thicker layer to crunch, give spices or herbs or more intensive flavours, chop in some spring onions or other herbs to make it sing, but damn, it was so fun to have something unique and a different texture to play with. It was fun that it wasn’t easy. It was fun to make a fairly standard salad into a meal that’s silly and strange and appetising.

That is one of things I am getting from this exponentially lengthening project: challenge. Safe challenge though. Sohla has given me some building blocks I knew about but didn’t use (plan it, taste it), and the book gives me new ways of thinking about ingredients (the pearl barley was just a wet, sticky starch - how far away is that from describing batter, really?).

I was so excited to realise there was a Sohla recipe I could make, even if it was one I’ve made loads before. I was excited to write about remaking that recipe, rediscovering it for an audience of me, sans fat consumption. I was excited to take some pics, write about it. That excitement carried through to using pearl barley (an ingredient I loathe to use because time), so I planned ahead, put the pb on after breakfast, was organised - which does feel good for lil choatic me. I like that it’s not easy, partly because I am ill, I am recovering, there is little I’m able to do, there is much that my mind won’t settle on or my body puts me into danger when I start. So this was good. Exciting. Tasty. But safe.