Post-conference bloat

Sunday morning breakfast

I've been thinking about gout.

My big toe has been hurting in the mornings. I wake up, notice the faint, dull ache, and think of my brother, who had gout last year after a weekend bender of food & drink debauchery with friends.

I silently catalog the contents of my meals between last Wednesday and  Sunday: bread pudding with caramel sauce, potato chowder, seafood chowder, Caesar salad, eggs benedict with hollandaise sauce, red wine, sushi, a sake-limoncello martini, bread pudding (yes, again), chicken Chesapeake (chicken stuffed with crab - if you can believe it), fresh croissants with jam and the sweetest, creamiest butter you ever did taste, pasta, coffee with cream, buffalo chicken pizza.

I could tell you the technical reasons that rich food and alcohol cause gout, something about a buildup of uric acid that often collects in the big toe, but I'd rather think of my mildly achy toe as a sending up a little flare, a message that I should eat some lettuce, drink more water, and maybe go for a brisk walk (which I would do, if my toe didn't hurt, and if the temperature wasn't wallowing in the  single or negative digits outside).

I also think of asparagus, a known gout culprit, which doesn't seem fair, seeing as how it's a vegetable and all, but it makes a kind of strange sense since we're talking about uric acid here, and asparagus is supposed to make your pee smell funny, though it's never done that to mine. My brother blamed his gout on asparagus, and I'm thinking of doing the same. I did eat a fat bunch of it last Tuesday. But we both know it was most likely the wine or bread puddings or the chowders.

I consumed all of this yumminess last week in Washington, DC, where I attended AWP, the Association of Writers and Writing Programs conference. AWP, of course, is about writers and writing, not about food and eating. But hotels and restaurants are conducive to goutly behavior. And I'm still too full of ideas and names of lit journals and panel sessions to write about anything but the food and drink.

I'm home now. There is no bread pudding here, though there are several unopened bottles of wine. I ate a pear tonight, taken from one of the hotel buffets, and called it good.

** ** **
That last line feels like it's almost trying to reach toward larger significance, doesn't it? A good essay examines the particular and connects it to the universal. But this is not a good essay. This is just a blog post about how I ate too much rich food and then worried about getting gout, and then realized I was just getting fatter, not goutier. Sometimes, a bowl of bread pudding is just a bowl of bread pudding, man.

Comments

[Sean the Gout Treatment Guy]

Thankfully your situation was most likely not gout. Gout is such a dreadfully painful disease. It's a wonder how those with gout don't go absolutely insane.

Your diet sounds quiet tasty. I recently had steak topped with crab meat at Longhorn's. Would love to try chicken Chesapeake. I've never seen that at any restaurants. Would love to try it if I get the chance to visit DC. What restaurant was that?