THE LIQUID DIET

Duncan Blitz was on a liquid diet, he'd been sick and was mending. Duncan steamed baby peas with butter and salt and drank the pot liquor. He melted cookies n cream ice cream, picked out the chocolate chips, drank the vanilla and pressed the cookie dough through a sieve. He cooked a 4-lb roast, carved it and sipped the drippings. He sauteed onions, beef and potatoes, simmered with parsnips carrots and turnips, and sieved the broth. He went out for miso soup and decided tofu is a liquid. He took home wonton soup and served the soft steamed wrappers to his dog Wylie. Duncan Blitz cooked a delicious sweet potato soup, but it wouldn't liquefy and didn't qualify. He considered ordering a pizza, margarita, to lick the oil.

Comforted by the memory of recent meals, Duncan thought about eggs-bene-with- smoked salmon not bacon, the english muffins sopped with hollandaise and perfectly poached warm runny eggs, that was meal #2. A veal chop with potatoes and garlicky blackened string beans, that was meal #1.

Duncan's pleasure center was dominated by one multi-sensory memory: salted cashews. Crunching salty oily noisy tasty cashews, whole and split. crunch, crunchy cashews. Every neuron wired for a serving dish of crunchy tasty cashews...