Appetites

I feel so cosmopolitan, seeing this New York Times article highlighting cabbage's many virtues. I bet those yuppies would be sooooo jealous of me, who luxuriates in cabbage every night. 

Eating in the Ukrainian winter isn't as bad as I'd anticipated. You just have to be creative. My favorite breakfast is pumpkin kashka. You shred some pumpkin and cook it with milk, adding cinnamon and raisins. I like to add apples and honey, too.

I do feel, though, that I'm not getting enough protein. Last week I walked past a man carving up a cow in his driveway. Knife to hoof, he dangled a white haunch to the pavement, where blood pooled very bright against the snow. Cats gathered to lap it, bawling. 

I think about that when I feel like mewling and slaking a bloodlust against the ice. Also I think about Ovid's description of Hunger in Metamorphoses, this Gollum-like creature "in a stony wasteland... plucking with nail and tooth at the scanty herbage." It's not just hunger for food. This week I was dissatisfied with everything, desired everything - as if Hunger herself had clamped her lips to my mouth and started sucking.

Today, to be fair, was beautiful, even if completely covered in ice. Hardly a wasteland - the birches, silver branches pouring down, look like fountains startled in the middle of falling.