JessicaRulestheUniverse.com

Jan van Grevenbroeck (1731-1807), Venetian doctor during the plague. Museo Correr, Venice

Things I found in my old and underused refrigerator while searching for something dessert-ish

1. Stalactites in the freezer

2. Rose-flavored Turkish delight from 2017. That’s definitely a dessert but I’m not sure it’s still edible and will only open the box if we’re 20 pages into the Book of Revelations.

3. A bag of brown sugar from Iloilo. Round Christmas a few years ago, my friend gave me some pretty notebooks and aforementioned bag. “It’s…a bag of sugar,” I said. “It’s from our harvest,” he said. Ah, feudalism.

3. A bottle of Kikkoman sauce. They were giving it away with Japanese tourist visas in 2018. I don’t know why, but it’s much appreciated now.

4. Dried-up ginger root. Last year I had pain and swelling in my right wrist from signing 100 books backwards (Mirror-writing, which I practiced and perfected in boring Comp Lit classes). I was afraid it was carpal tunnel syndrome, but Yodel’s dad’s caregiver suggested that I put a piece of boiled ginger on the swelling and tie a handkerchief around it. It got very hot, and an hour later the pain and swelling were gone. Today doctors are looking into the efficacy of ginger and turmeric against coronavirus. I believe in the power of ginger.

5. A bottle of crunchy chili garlic oil from Becky’s Kitchen that Susan gave me last December. It’s genius and it’s saving my tastebuds from microwave cuisine.

6. A 2-month old kiwi. Dammit.

7. Cats’ vitamins. Children’s vitamins, actually. Whenever the cats have colds I give them 1ml of vitamin C syrup in a dropper. They hate it so much their cold clears up immediately. Also if a cat has no appetite (which has not happened since Koosi in 2000), give them children’s vitamins with zinc.

8. Bottle of vitamin D-3 supplements I bought when I self-diagnosed a vitamin D deficiency, but stopped taking when I realized each softgel was 1,250% of the RDA. It may still come in handy if lockdown is extended and the summer sunlight is too intense to stand in.

9. A box of the Game of Thrones sigil cookies that Tracy made for Xmas 2018. Aha! Shortbread still tastes good. Remember when we were all ga-ga about Game of Thrones, and it took just three episodes for everyone to turn on the show completely? I still think the first three seasons are great, the fourth and fifth okay, and the last three seasons had their moments even as they descended into fan service and self-destruction. Wonder if George R.R. Martin is finishing The Winds of Winter in quarantine. Leave the man alone, he owes you nothing.

10. And gold! Some hawthorn berry candy I must’ve brought home from Hong Kong ages ago, and three-quarters of a bar of bitter Malagos chocolate that an astrophysicist turned data scientist gave me two years ago. She’s using big data to track this pandemic, so all will be well.

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