Outbreak update

So I'm home, living off of spiced tea. I usually don't really eat canned soup, so I don't have any around the house and may have to venture out to the store to grab some. Of course, luck has it that my cold should line up with some of the worst weather to (finally) hit this fall.

I've been living off of spiced tea. Actually got the idea from some Patak's recipe thing I got a while back. Throw some green cardamom pods, a stick of cinnamon, and cloves (I only had ground cloves, not whole), cook it up, add tea, strain, add boiled milk, sugar, and you had some good damn tea.

I had some star anise lying around (because, you know, that's how the majority of people find star anise, just sorta lying around in the back of the cupboard along with the green cardamom) and tossed one in. Didn't have an orange peel, but didn't really worry about that. I didn't have any orange pekoe tea and my good Ceylon was back at the office so I figured since Irish breakfast was a blend of some black teas, there had to be some orange pekoe or Ceylon in that, right? So in went two bags of Barry's.

Though does it really matter since I can't even really taste anything I'm so backed up right now? All the subtleties of that spice and crap is really lost on my deadened senses. Last night I had some tomato basil soup and I swear all I could taste was salt with a slight tinny aftertaste. That is some straight up bullshit. I'm fuckin' gutted because a) I really like tomato basil (though more of a tomato bisque person) and 2) I can't fucking taste anything!! You don't understand, me and my sense of taste and smell? We have a thing. As a kid I used to smell my food before I ate it. Seriously, I'd give it a pretty deep precursory sniff, then dig in. Always. Because you could guess what something generally tasted like before you ate it from the smell. At least I felt like I could. Then when you really ate it the smell kind of aligned with the flavors and it was like "Hmmm, intriguing..." and you could compare and contrast and stuff. Now my nose is gone and my taste with it. The bastards.

I need to go lie down a bit.