¹

Everything I eat these days has to be prepared to the point of “isn’t that too much?”. Then I add an egg² and bring it to the table.

The egg in question is generally courtesy of Sohla’s exquisite boiling technique and timings. My ideal is the 7 minute jammy egg. Pot to a boil, eggs in - and out - at the same time³ with seven minutes on the timer and a constant bubble going. Seven minutes to prep a spoon and bowl of cold water and the four to six blocks of ice left over from my morning iced Fortisip latte⁴. Knock the rounded bottoms (God I miss my rounded bottom) with the spoon, deglove them in the water after a minute or 120, and put them in in a tupperware for the fridge/next sandwich/katsu/bolognese/plate of food that most closely resembles an ‘Irish salad’ sans tomato or coleslaw, patting dry as you go. I don’t marinate, because I don’t know which meal will need that extra protein pump (ie all of them will and I refuse to stick to a cuisine), and I’m not sharing anything new because I told you all about these when I made those tacos almost TWO YEARS AGO!

I don’t like how on trend⁵ I’ve been with diet recently. When I first wrote about cucumbers, I wasn’t on that side of TikTok, so picking an achievable recipe from my Sohla Bible had nothing to do with potential virality or perceived photoperfection. IT was just somthing easy from the start that I had/liked most of the ingredients to, which is why I kept (and keep) going back. You didn’t see it here, because I was not blogoshere-capable, but just as I found a low fat food that I gave a small lift to an otherwise dire physical and dietary time, look who pops up on the gram, but cottage cheese! Only being able to eat tiny amounts at a time due to feeling really full quickly? AND losing an ungodly amount of weight? AND NOW YOU’RE BASING EACH MEAL AROUND PROTEIN!?!? Honey, the Ozzemmy is suiting you.

Well, it’s not. I’ve not been on it, I’ve not desired to be on it, and I find compliments on my weight loss REALLY uncomfortable.

I’m malnourished. I’ve been malnourished for months and it’s been scary. I’m gaining weight now (thank you butter and cheese and adding an egg to every savoury dish), but there was a morning after one of my bigger surgeries⁶ when I walked to the bathroom of my new ward and had to avert my eyes. The mirror was larger than anything in the ICU (which didn’t have patient bathrooms, I guess becuase if you can get to a bathroom, you’re probably too fit for the ICU), and I didn’t cry. I didn’t cry then, and I didn’t cry when I couldn’t sit up properly on chairs because I could feel my spine. I didn’t cry when my bony ass stopped me from sleeping and developed a sore that’s still not quite healed. I didn’t cry. I still have barely cried, considering, you know, everything. I lost more than a third of myself, and damn, my loved ones have been a fucking marvel, and I got through the worst, even when it just led to more worst, and my body, my body has time and again made a mockery of illness and defeat and knotted itself together again and again, and I love it so much and I am so glad I had all that extra body to be used: the rounded bottom; the overhanging belly; the thighs that would not crush, but comfort any small woodland creatures that got near.

I miss that body. I was scared of my skeleton body (though it has its place too, and if that’s what I had, that’s what I’d love, in fact, I did love it even then, it had me walking and learning new ways of taking care of myself. It helped me develop the “Too Much” Diet, a way of eating as densely as possible without throwing up (top tip: painkillers need to kick in BEFORE the meal, and napping needs to happen whenever it can. Let those intestines do that work in peace baby!).

I had to lay down the Sohla when I was ill. It was too hard to recreate the meals in a way that was healthy for me at that time. To be fair to the book, it was hard for me to text my family or watch YouTube at that time⁷.

I’m still ill, I still have a surgery to go, and I still have to watch myself, restrengthen, regrow. But Sohla is my implement. Sure, I could have that book as hunting ground for rich recipes and use something more overtly therapeutic to deal with all the mind thoughts, maybe even get back to other creative endeavours to feed the soul. But you know me. Why use two or three tools when you have one you can shoehorn everything onto?

P.S. No pics this time, because

Just because