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It's OKAY to have a phobia.  Phobias are defined as irrational fears.  Yet, most phobias are far from irrational.  The best thing to do is find a competent, caring psychologist (or psychiatrist) who can help you through your fears.  Or who can at least lend an ear to letting you vent about them.

I've never been able to find anyone who will listen about my own phobia:  swallowing.  Right now I'm having a seriously hard time eating because over the past few weeks I've developed some kind of fear that I will choke at any moment.  As I'm chewing, my chest and stomach begin to feel bloated and I feel the need to burp.  Just as I begin to swallow, I burp instead and it makes me start gagging and I don't know what to do.  I try burping right before I swallow to see if that helps, but what I usually end up doing is gripping the edge of the table as I force myself to swallow, or gripping the arm of the chair.  I also usually end up abandoning what I'm eating halfway through.  I go through phases of the problem every few months.  It makes eating at work tough because I'm embarrassed when people can see me eating.

I've tried to tell a few people about this.  Namely, I've told some doctors and my psychology professor from college.  They all laughed at me.  My professor told me he had never, ever heard of something like this (and he was in his sixties).  Another doctor told me I was just ridiculous.  Another looked right at me and asked, "Are you a little sissy girl?"

Sometimes it gets so bad I can't swallow liquid.  Once my mother took me out to eat and I couldn't even eat little pieces of crab.  A lot of times I resort to crunchy food because it breaks down into smaller pieces as opposed to, say, bread, which becomes a giant clump in my mouth and I have to roll it around trying to separate it into smaller bites.

Crazy, right?  I don't know what to do.  I talk to those doctors, hoping they'll give me advice, like what they would tell someone with a narrow esophagus or an extremely sensitive gag reflex.  But instead they laugh at me.  One even told me, when I asked him to reassure me that I won't choke, that I could in fact choke on something as small as a pea.  He said it quite dismissively.  He could have lied.  He could have tried to help me.  Instead he just made the situation even worse.

It's exhausting to eat.  It's a fight.  Should I ask for some kind of anxiety pills that I take an hour or so before eating (which I would have to crush up and put in pudding)?  Is there a trick to sort of hypnotize myself?  Should I start collecting recipes that only use crunchy foods?  I don't know what to do.

Recent Recipe

Mini Deep-Dish Pizzas

The first thing we found out was that the dough expands.  We thought we were going to make cute little pizza bowls in muffin cups.  Instead, because we cooked the dough a little before adding the ingredients, it ended up as thick, giant crusts with the toppings pouring over the top.  What we would most likely do differently is just put a little dough in the bottom of each cup, just enough to cover the bottom, and then stack the toppings without worrying about making a little bowl.  Because I decided to bake them in foil muffin cups it would be easy to just peel the foil away (it was easy) and the cheese would probably keep the shape of the pizza intact.

I bought pesto and kapers to go on my pizzas.  I love kapers, but I wasn't expecting the severe overload of vinegar taste these kapers were sporting (they actually tasted - long after I was finished eating them - like alcohol).  I bought green onions to go on my mom's pizzas and black olives for my sister.  My father is very plain - just pepperoni please.  But lots of it.  All in all, though, it was a nice change from freakin' pork chops and green beans every night.

How the Breakfast Went

Baked Eggs in Tomatoes

Of course, it didn't go as smoothly as the recipe made it sound.  It took over an hour to get the eggs to cook.  We also decided that instead of mixing the insides of the tomatoes into the eggs we would just drop a whole egg down into the hollowed tomato, then put some cheese and other things on top of that.  Or put those things down in and then put an egg on top.  That might work out best because then we can judge whether the egg has cooked or not.  The problem with the insides of the tomatoes was they caused the whole thing to be too watery and the eggs didn't appear cooked.  We could save the tomato innards for chilli or pasta sauce.

Living for Me

This weekend, I bought a new refrigerator to go in my bedroom.  It's 3.2 cubic-inches and holds about three times as much food as my previous fridge.  My plan was to feed myself.  I'm quite tired of feeding five lazy people.  I don't mind feeding my parents - they pay almost all of the utilities and the rent and, besides, they fed me.  But every time I go to the grocery store and buy food, it will be eaten within twenty-four hours.  Last weekend my mother bought a pack of twenty Hot Pockets and it was gone by that evening.  I can't afford this any more.  A few weeks ago we came downstairs to breakfast to find my nephew making four subs - two for himself, one for his girlfriend, and one for the kid who slept over the night before.

It's not like we can designate food to people, either.  If my mother buys herself ice cream and tells those people not to eat it because she's treating herself, she better buy a serving she can eat in one sitting because as soon as she goes to bed they are going to eat that ice cream behind her back.  I can't stock up on frozen meals to take to work either because even if I write my name on them in permanent marker they will eat them.  (Or they will microwave them, I will catch them, they will get angry that I'm angry, and they will throw it away saying, "Fine, I won't eat your stupid dinner then.")  Today my father went to get some leftover chilli and when he opened the container someone (read:  my nephew) had decided they didn't want to scoop out a serving into a bowl so they put crackers in the container and then decided they didn't want it anymore, so they just put the lid back on it and walked away.  It was a mushy, disgusting mess and an incredible waste.

I think I've mentioned this before, but I also can't buy food I want to eat because I have to worry about portions that will feed eight people.  I have to buy chicken legs, macaroni and cheese, baked beans, five-pound-packages of hamburger, spaghetti (yuck), white bread, American cheese, tater tots, ground steak patties - this is a weekly list.  We eat those things freaking weekly.  And they must be in constant supply.  I just can't take it.

So tonight, I went to the store and spent way more money than I had intended to fill the new fridge.  But I bought things I want to eat.  I bought bacon-flavored cheese-filled mushrooms, salsa, tortilla chips, gouda cheese, salami, and two kinds of hummus.  I've decided that every paycheck I will buy the ingredients for a recipe, starting with recipes from Martha Stewart's Food Magazine. 

This week's special:  Baked Eggs in Tomatoes.

I will substitute feta cheese for the parmesan, though, because I only like parmesan on pizza, as a substitute for mozzerella (not my favorite).

I'm tired of being so unhappy.  I know they're mad that I've been splurging on myself lately but you know the drill.  Fuck 'em.  They're selfish bastards and they're breeding a selfish bitch in me. 

Dream-Eating

Another "If I had the money to..." post:

If I had the money to buy any kind of food, some things I would buy:

Wasabi-flavored mayonnaise
Flavored creamer that is actually cream and is kept in the fridge
Flavored coffee, so the creamer and the coffee blend uniquely
Good salad ingredients, which means no iceberg lettuce (disgusting):
fresh mushrooms
kapers!
olives
crumbly cheeses
a variety of salad dressings
Multiple choices of drinks (not just one drink for three days, then another for three days, etc.):
vegetable juice
chocolate milk
juice smoothies
Fresh fruit:
strawberries
plums!
blackberries!
pineapple
kiwi (though in small doses due to mild allergy)
fresh vegetables:
asparagus
squash

To be continued when I get back from work....

Tacos

So, a little look into my life and what I could eat every single day: homemade tacos. One night a few weeks ago I ate seven tacos. If you want to know what a feat that is, I weigh 128.2 lbs. When I move out, just like I did when I was in grad school, I'll most likely fall into the habit of buying taco ingredients in bulk and eating them for dinner every night. Let's break it down into how far I can take these ingredients:

5 pounds ground chuck: $8.39
colby cheese (blocks, because I FLOVE it home-shredded): 3 for $5
large bottle of Ortega taco sauce: $3.99
hard taco shells: 18 for $2.99
All-purpose seasoning (it doesn't have to be taco seasoning): $2.39
small zip-lock freezer bags: 40 for $3.29 (for the meat)

I'd probably eat between 2-4 tacos a night, so the shells will last a little less than a week. The five pounds of chuck will last for months, though, and since it can be divided up and frozen and be fine for that amount of time, it's awesome.

But initially I'm spending $26.05. Plus tax for the freezer bags. Of course I probably would take a break from the tacos and not eat them every night, but if I had to chose one meal I was forced to eat for the rest of my life, that would be it. And as you can see, I like them simple. I like sour cream and avocado and all, but not on my hard tacos.

How I can use these ingredients in my other meals: cheese can go on chili cheese home fries or in chili; the hamburger can be used for chili; I use the seasoning on my eggs for breakfast; I like taco sauce in place of ketchup for things like fried potatoes.

(Off-topic: I type two spaces after a period. I hear this is some form of blasphemy now, but I don't really give a damn. I learned to type with two spaces. I could teach myself otherwise but that's ridiculous. What is the purpose? I'm a writer who sends out my manuscripts, which will be re-typed if they are ever accepted by a publisher, so it's silly to ever worry about it. I mean, if I ever got a job where one of my main functions is to type correspondence or articles, etc. I'd have to learn the new way, but I think I'm going to cross that bridge when I get there. I only bring up this topic because I heard it drives some people nuts that there are people who aren't conforming to the new way, but I just have to ask, why do you care?)

My Eating Habits

When I started at my job five years ago, I had a pretty poor diet. One thing which didn't help was the store I work at was two minutes from Taco Bell and I'm a sucker for that place. A likely meal for me would be a bean burrito with no onions and extra cheese, a Reeces Cup, and a Mountain Dew. I drove to get those things.

In the past three years or so, a lot has changed. Two years ago the store moved, which helped a lot, but the changes had begun even before then. I began walking to Kroger down the strip to buy a frozen dinner and a juice. I stopped eating things like candy and cake. I slowly stopped drinking pop.

This year alone, I can truly count on my fingers the times I've had pop. I have had maybe five orange-soda-floats from Wendy's. I've had, I believe, two Mountain Dews from Taco Bell and two from KFC. Cakes, brownies, and whole candy bars make me want to vomit (cake really, truly makes me feel ill when I eat it).

My parents keep buying me sweets when they go to the store, and right now, I can see a package of carmalized waffle cookies, a box of smores cereal, a box of strawberry shortcake rolls, and a giant Hershey's bar which does have a few bites out of it but that's because my mother wanted some. I have eaten a few of the cakes, with milk, and only when I feel shaky like I'm having a low blood sugar attack (hypoglycemia). What I prefer when I feel an attack is a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, mostly because peanut butter supplies both the sugar for immediate affect and protein for a lasting affect. Sometimes I munch here and there out of the cereal but it's taking a long time.

So here's the bottom line: I don't like sweets. And I'm beginning to abhor "home cooking" because all my mother ever makes is fried chicken and macaroni and cheese and hamburger steaks (fried) and fried potatoes and etc. etc. ad nauseum. It's disgusting. I try to keep back-ups for these occasions. Salsa, hummus, cous-cous, guacamole, assortments of cheeses, deli-thin ham.

And breakfast has become some kind of religious experience for me. When I was in grad school, I got out of bed, took a bath, left for school, returned home, ate a bowl of soup, returned to school, returned home, ate cheese and crackers, did homework (ahem, um, yeah) and went back to bed. I lost forty pounds.

Now, breakfast can't just be waffles (my mother happily pulled them out of the bag as though I should have jumped up and down because she bought them - I reminded her I'd throw up within the hour if I ate waffles for breakfast), and it can't just be cereal, and it can't just be a banana. It has to be a meal. A typical breakfast for me, with ingredients hoarded away in the little refrigerator in my bedroom, is an English muffin with an egg, ham, amish swiss cheese, and garden vegetable cream cheese on it. Or it's a breakfast burrito with sausage, egg, cheese, avocado-ranch mix, and taco sauce. Or it's chili cheese home fries with a few slices of turkey bacon. Tomorrow morning I think it's going to be a grilled cheese sandwich with one slice American, one slice muenster, on honey-wheat bread with turkey bacon.

In general I just can't eat like they do. It's hard to buy groceries for six people on $100 or so a week, so what we buy are things like hamburger and huge pork loins that can be divided up. Chicken legs are always extremely cheap for a large package. The rest of my family thinks macaroni and cheese is a gourmet meal. Spaghetti is relatively cheap. Chili is enjoyed by all (including me) and makes a huge pot so we make it about twice a week (it gets old, though, eating the same thing over and over). Tonight we had chicken legs and macaroni and cheese and corn and cottage cheese. I tried to eat a piece of chicken (but it was undercooked so I stopped), some mac and cheese (but it was undercooked so I stopped), and some cottage cheese (it wasn't cooked so it was fine).

The more and more that things like this go on, the more I dream of a studio apartment where I only have to buy food for myself and since I don't eat much, I can get what I want and make it last. And it will be good food, like fruits and vegetables and juice (I drink one cup of coffee in the morning and juice or occasionally tea the rest of the day). I can only imagine the dinners I could make with $100 a week for just me. I don't know that I would even need that much money.