You've got to see it to believe it:
Yes, that's cold (refrigerated, leftover) sticky rice piled high with Kimchi. Yes, these kinds:
The one on the left is "mild"--meaning very sour but not the kind setting your mouth on fire. The one on the right with the the lid that makes it look like Bonne Maman jam is full of fire--when I popped the lid, I could see the fermentation bubbling. This kind of kimchi is special; as a Korean friend said, "it hurts going in and it hurts coming out." This is true; you feel that peppery burn at both ends of the alimentary canal.
Why is this meal so delicious? Why am I heading back into the kitchen right now, breaking off typing for just one more spoonful of the stuff on the left? "Ha, ha, like a pregant woman!" I said. And a nurse said. And my friends said. Which got me wondering, naturally, what on earth a 66-year-old postmenopausal woman has in common with a pregnant one. You'd think nothing. The whole business of my treatment has been to block estrogen, the hormone feeding the cancer. A pregnant woman's estrogen levels rise sharply in early pregancy. Which is, believe me, not the state I'm in.
But maybe estrogen, or a need for estrogen, has something to do with my current cravings--and wow, are those cravings strong. I walk into my apartment and can smell the kimchi even before I open the refrigerator. Those jars are tightly screwed shut. "What a lovely aroma!" I pause to inhale, knowing most people would wonder "What's that awful stink?" It's the delicious fermenting heavily garlicked peppery spice of kimchi, elixer of the gods!
Without yesterday's dose of Trodelvy, however, I doubt I'd feel this way. I liked kimchi before, but in small doses, and I didn't eat it all the time. Now I'm gobbling it. Exhilerating.
I listened to a podcast suggesting a beneficial effect of light doses of estrogen in breast cancer. Listening to this while dozing, I woke right up. It turned out the guy who invented Tamoxifen discovered that when the drug failed, light doses of estrogen helped push back the cancer. Can this be?
Sounds like a hair of the dog that bit you. But maybe. Maybe.
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