Value

It is a quiet morning. The few jets that now fly over us come in spurts morning and late afternoon. Most are large freighters with indistinguishable colors. They often fly different patterns due to the skies being clear of traffic.

It makes me think how we took the value of our life style for granted. Since last fall I tried to suppress the feeling, let’s call it instinct, that there would be a reckoning. The chance that this level of bad behavior was not going to have consequences was remote.

A good example is my own behavior the last few months. Like many others sitting at home baking became an outlet. Bread is my main go too, and so I retrieved the sourdough recipe and grew a starter. This in itself is not an issue. There is not much bad that can come from sourdough bread.

But it did not end there. After watching Julia Childs and Jacques Pepin’s old TV shows, experiments with various buttered dough began. Some recipes are more elaborate than others. Some require a bit of technique, and of course that means much dough needs to be made to acquire the proper outcome.

The diet in my home, since I am the cook, is sybaritic. There is no meat, poultry, or fish. Butter is used sparingly replaced by a fruity, spicy extra virgin olive oil sourced from a beautiful hillside above Fiesole near Florence Italy. There is moderate use of salt and spices. White wine with dinner is necessary but it takes two days to finish a bottle.

This discipline began to break down. I found myself buying butter, not to mention eggs, at a rate unheard of in the near past. I became anxious as the shelves of the local grocery became sparser and sparser. The lack of toilet paper worried me less than the empty flour shelf.

One treat after another was produced, all flaky and sweet and delicious. There were a few mistakes but they were learned by and the trend to richer foods did not abate.

Then one evening with back-to-back Julia and Jacques tutorials on soufflés the zenith was reached. I should have seen it coming but my mind was cloudy with butterfat. The next morning with recipes flying out of the printer and post-it note tabs protruding from multiple cookbooks a plan was hatched. Tonight a simple but elegant cheese soufflé would be served for dinner.

Eggs are not a part of my usual repertoire. I do understand their utility and the fascinating chemistry behind it. What I don’t like is messing with them. I will hold my nose on occasion to make a frittata with left over pasta and vegetables but I am usually chastised for not using enough of them.

A soufflé is a dish whose very structure demands eggs. I failed to realize that I had succumbed to the allure of heavy cream, organic eggs, fresh creamery butter, and fine white flour. I had succumbed to the tyrants of technique and outcomes.

About this time, my left foot, toes to be exact, began to ache. Years ago after a long hike the soreness did not fade away, and I asked the x-ray tech in my office to snap an x-ray. Sure enough, in plain sight the second toe showed signs of arthritis. I was in my late fifties and if this was the worst of it, I considered myself lucky.

So, when my foot started to ache I chalked it up to the osteoarthritic joints. I thought my shoes were too tight and changed to a more broken in pair for daily wear. Then I decided that using the exercise bike in the basement was the aggravating agent and I cut back to every other day. Finally as I lay down to sleep the weigh of the bed sheet seemed excessive.

I determined that first thing in the morning I would take a full history and perform an exam. I would look at my foot, something I had feigned to do. There, on this nearly forty years a vegetarian’s left foot was reddish swelling across the metatarsals.

This could not be, but it was – gout! How many times had I diagnosis this in other poor souls, and ordained the value of a low fat and a low protein diet. Denied them beer and dairy. How many times had I inwardly smirked while writing a prescription for a powerful anti-inflammatory, and ordered a test for uric acid blood levels. The memories came flooding back.

And though doctors that treat themselves have fools for patients, there was no refuting this. I searched the medicine cabinet for a drug other than Tylenol and in the corner, hiding behind a large bottle of ignored multivitamins, was a small plastic container of ibuprofen.

I popped two rust colored pills into my mouth, walked into the kitchen, and extolled on the value of brown rice and vegetables. My behavior had bested me, to say nothing of the soufflé!

June 2020