sadness

last thursday, i came home, wanting nothing more than a big bowl of popcorn for dinner. but i also wanted to make something to take to lunch the next day. so i whipped up a fabulous batch of dal with fried tofu, to be eaten over basmati rice. no recipe, no original plan--it just happened. even though i had initially planned to eat it only for lunch, i decided to have a bowl for dinner. yum! two hours later, i'm still a bit hungry, so i make a bowl of popcorn, sprinkled with rice wine vinegar, nutritional yeast and basil, a combo that i'll swear by, it's so good.

as i was finishing up the popcorn, i began to feel a bit queazy. maybe, i thought, i was just feeling dehydrated. maybe i just had a wee stomach ache. i have what many consider to be an iron stomach and i can't remember the last time i got sick (not including the time last year that i drank too much ouzo). i decided to go to bed and sleep it off. several hours later, at 3am, i woke up, rolled around in agony for a bit, got out of bed, walked into the bathroom and threw up. how ill bred. then i did it again at 6am. tacky. and, to be graphic, it was ALL popcorn. so i figured it was something in there--perhaps the vinegar?--that had set me off.

i was supposed to be at work at 8am that morning and could barely drag myself out of bed, so i called in sick. by the afternoon, i felt better.

time passes. i eat no popcorn. yesterday around lunch time, i went into my fridge and got out the remaining tofu and dal and had a nice big bowl of it. after eating, i went for a lovely bike ride, came home and prepared to go to yoga. just before leaving the house, i downed a glass of water. about halfway through the glass, i felt my stomach ache returning. i ignored it and started down the stairs. by the time i'd reached the out-of-doors, i felt like i was on the brink of barfing. sigh. damnit. so i turned around, went back upstairs, took off my coat, and got into bed, resigned to eventually throwing up, glad that i wasn't halfway through my first bikram yoga session when the tummy ache hit.

luckily, having already familiarized myself with this particular stomach ache, i was able to prevent another session of puking by putting nothing into my system except the seltzer water that my sweetheart of a co-worker brought by. and, oh yeah, it was definitely the tofu. looked at the date of the container i'd bought with the one i'd eaten--Use By Sept.26th. ew. oops. that'll show me!