There is this thingy, instant flavored mashed potato packages. Boil water in the electric kettle, then pour it into bowl, then pour in flakes. The brand I buy, Idahoan, comes in a few flavors, some bland but also “Loaded Baked” which has little bacon pieces in it and four kinds of cheese (probably not good for nausea). Idahoan is supposedly among the most decent of the instant mashed potato brands.

The following Idahoan flavors seem to work when you’ve gotten back to medium nausea:

• Baby Reds
• Butter & Herb
• Roasted Garlic
• Original (of course)

Other flavors include “Southwest” and “Four Cheese.”

This is so nice. It takes less effort than rice or rice porridge, and it’s more variety, of a sort. Recently my diet consists of table water crackers, rice with butter and salt, instant chicken noodle soup, and plain digestive biscuits. Today (well, yesterday now) I ate one of the Nile Spice instant soups (chicken-flavored vegetable) and I haven’t thrown up, which is a vast improvement.

I plan on working my way up to pasta with butter and soy sauce, the spicier Nile Spice soups, flavored yogurt, toasted home-made bread with yogurt-based spread, and then back to normal. I’m going to so want pizza after all this, even greasy fast foods in general—teriyaki chicken and dumplings in particular—but I daren’t eat anything even remotely rich for a while. I remember the last time I got flu, even after I got better (or… something), I still threw up in the evenings for about three weeks after.

On my very bland diet, I haven’t thrown up, even when codeine is tossed at me. So… I guess more of this.

Sigh. I guess an upside is that when I eat bland food, I don’t care very much about it, and don’t eat very much of it. It becomes fuel and nothing more. I do need to eat more fruit soon. I tend to binge on it though—good fruit is very flavorful and hella snackable. There are few things I love more than those little mandarin oranges, home-made applesauce, and little strawberries.

I also used to experiment with veggies for dinner, like take home anything and cut it up and microwave it according to that red-checkered Better Homes & Gardens Cookbook, which has all the basic American cookery stuff in it. Tasted very nice; I started to crave turnips, kind of strange. I lost a lot of weight, and should look into doing that again. Every night’s dinner was a fillet of salmon, half a cup of cooked rice, and a veggie experiment.

And bento lunches… I want to get back to those. Especially with the Laptop Lunch containers, they were perfect for a not-too-large lunch and some snackery during the day… also bento breakfasts. I miss that stuff!