I wouldn't call myself a foodie, I'm no Nigella or Jamie, but I've always enjoyed cooking and eating. Food has not only been a sensual pleasure, it's been one of the things my social life revolved around - going out for meals, cooking for the family, inviting friends round or going for a drink after work.
Picnics, pasta and parmesan. Comforting Hungarian dishes my mother used to make - stuffed cabbage, chicken paprika, goulash laced with sour cream. It's hard to make the effort, of course, when you live on your own as I have done for the last ten or so years but when friends came, or my family stayed the weekend, it was a pleasure to serve fresh tuna with a balsamic vinegar, mango and feta salad, or smoked fish and mushroom lasagne, or for Sunday lunch slow roasted lamb flavoured with rosemary from the garden followed by upside down chocolate pudding oozing sauce or a buttery apple pie with walnuts, cinnamon and thick cream. I was looking forward to cooking with my grandsons as they grew up.
It's all changed. There was a false dawn after surgery to remove a squamous cell carcinoma firmly embedded in my left cheek and wrapping itself nastily round my upper jaw. After the ten and a
half hour operation; the loss of all my teeth on the left hand side ('A pity,' said my surgeon, 'you had good teeth'); the skin graft from my wrist into my cheek, and the partial neck dissection ('You've got a long, elegant neck, ' he said, explaining where he was going to cut into it), I recovered remarkably quickly and was soon eating normally, fattening up again for the real ordeal - chemoradiotherapy. I had a vain hope that as the radiation would only go into one side of my face, the other would retain enough saliva glands to keep my mouth moist and allow me to eat normally. My oncologist smiled wearily, 'We'll have to see, the exit rays will still affect them, but everyone's different.' I chose to believe I would be different, that somehow I would escape the classic side effect of radiotherapy, a permanently dry mouth. Self deception is a wonderful thing.
It's only when you have little or no saliva that you realise how essential it is, how complex the whole mechanism of eating is, how impossible it is to chew or swallow normally without it - and how hard it is to accept or explain that it won't return to normal as everyone assumes it will. I regained my sense of taste quite quickly but eating ceased to be a pleasure and became a chore, just a way of refuelling, not part of the enjoyment of life. The list of things I can't eat seems endless while those I can barely cover a postcard. Like most people I'd have been happy to lose a few pounds once but over the last year I've lost two stone. Skinny at sixteen is fine but becoming skinny suddenly at sixty is not a good look.
It's like a bereavement, and almost as painfully as one clears out the clothes of a much loved parent, so I cleared the freezer, kitchen cupboards and storage jars of all the things I can no longer eat. Now everything has to be washed down with sauces, cream or yoghurt, and even then food will lodge in my throat and refuse to go down or come up again without a fight. No more restaurants for me - I never did get to that extravagantly expensive Michelin starred one by the river I always wanted to go to. I joked with a friend about the Observer's 'Blind Date' column where they ask whether the date had good table manners; choking, dribbling, having occasionally to dig food out of the corner of my mouth - somehow I don't think I'll pass that test.
I've persevered though and gradually the menu's expanding from the wretched Fortisip that in the bleakest time took over forty minutes of persistent, painful sipping to get down (and which I still partly rely on) to the endless soups or mango and ice cream that dominated my post radiotherapy diet at first. Christmas Day was memorable only because I sat trying to be jolly while the family tucked in, but things have improved. Dairy's still a staple: if the cancer doesn't get me the cholesterol will. Smoked salmon, stuffed eggs and asparagus; pancakes with spinach and cream cheese; guacamole without the raw onion that burned my mouth - I used cucumber instead; ratatouille; sweet potatoes roasted with garlic and lashings of butter; hot chocolate sauce made from melted Nutella and cream that pours nicely over vanilla ice cream - the list is gradually getting longer. Smoothies for breakfast, of course, with at least three different fruits; this morning's had banana, strawberries, nectarine, and a spoonful of Manuka honey. My two year old grandson thinks it's a great treat to help me make them, and smacks his lips as he drinks his token share. At my last six week review I'd even managed to put on a kilo - not much but the first time I'd put it on rather than losing it steadily since October.
Friends bring me things to try - they might not always work but they come with love and that is infinitely more comforting. And now this week something new from Sue who I've been staying with in Dorset for a few days. She's a good cook, bakes her own bread and, despite the invasions of marauding rabbits, deer and badgers, grows most of her own vegetables. This time of year the vegetable garden's abundant and the marrows fat, ripe and juicy. She stuffed one with mushrooms, sautéed onion and chunks of salmon and covered it with a light cheese sauce. Cooked slowly the salmon tenderised and it slipped down easily. Delicious. I used to live only a few miles from Sue and Stuart and have eaten many a good meal round their kitchen table. I mourned the loss of occasions like those but it hasn’t changed after all.
I'll try Sue's recipe at home together with the aubergine dip she gave me the recipe for - the spring onions might be a problem but I've got chives in the garden and I'll use them instead...I might even invite a couple of friends round who'll turn a diplomatic blind eye to my less than perfect table manners. Now that would be progress, perhaps a carefully chosen restaurant might be on the cards again one day - mind you, I don't think I'm quite ready for a blind date yet...
Have you got recipes to share? It would be good to hear about what works for anyone else
