allium sativum, how I miss thee

You know that smell? The scent of garlic slowly simmering, turning a succulent golden color, in olive oil over a medium flame?

And that taste? Yeah, you know the one I’m talking about… that one. Hhmmmm, oh yeah.

I miss it. OH, how I miss it.

At some point in the early 90’s my body betrayed me. Turned on me like a rabid dog. Garlic makes me sick. I have some sort of weird allergic reaction to it now and it sucks.

Since then just about every time I convince myself just a little won’t be so bad, it gets a little worse. I get palpitations, heartburn, gas - Oh MY GODS, THE GAS!- and then I feel like someone beat the hell out of me with a baseball bat.

That’s how I feel today. Because I didn’t think twice about eating an Amy’s vegetable lasagna meal for lunch yesterday.

Last night I had palpitations, a stomach ache, irritability – that could just have been my usual self though- and a general malaise of 'oh just let me lie here feeling like crap'.

This morning I feel like I went on a two day binge with a wine casket and let someone toss me over a cliff after they rolled me a few miles down a rocky incline and used me as a tackling dummy.

I brushed my teeth last night and this morning and the taste in my mouth makes me wish I could scrub my esophagus with a Lysol brillo pad.

This is probably why I developed such distaste for all things pasta tomato saucy over that past few years. I make a phenomenal gluten free lasagna for my husband, which the kids gobble down as well. The smell of it cooking makes me want to puke in my mouth now.

I’m Italian. This is so wrong. I’m supposed to be able to toss back raw garlic cloves as if they were super yummy candy. You know the last time I had homemade Garlic Bread? Shrimp Scampi? 1992.

Yeah, I know, it could be worse. But the way I feel today makes me want to hunt that bitch Amy down and slap her, just a little, for being so freakin’ heavy handed with the garlic.