The Curry for the Common Cold

For the past three days I have been cooped up in my room with a bad cold.  Being sick is a really rotten feeling, and I have a bad case of the sniffles.  Over the past couple days, I've struggled with eating because I really haven't been able to taste anything!  I am sooooooo sick of eating soup and dry foods, because everything tastes like cardboard.  I ordered Matzoh Ball soup from IU Hillel's Matzoh Ball Soup hotline, but it was frozen when it came, so I just shoved it in the freezer and decided to save it for tomorrow.  After some consultation with my Mom, I decided to order in from Roots on the Square, a health-food Vegetarian restaurant on the Square in downtown Bloomington (a couple blocks past Kirkwood).  I decided on the Red (mild!) Curry with a heaping portion of brown rice.  The food came in a speedy 30 minutes, and the smell wafted from the bag up the elevator back to my room.  I opened the container of Curry to find a creamy tan coconut broth with baked Tofu and a combination of mixed vegetables.  I took a spoonful of the grainy brown rice and dumped it in my container of Curry.  My first bite was a mixture of the spicy broth (I wouldn't really say it was of mild spice), with a crunch of a jagged edge carrot and a slice of zucchini.  My spoon reached down further into the broth, revealing pieces of yellow baby corn, translucent onions, dark green broccoli, and bright green snow peas.  Bite after bite my taste-buds lingered for more, as I placed the container on my desk to take a break, I found myself reaching for it back within seconds.  It was too good to save, I thought about the possibilities of saving it for tomorrow, and realized it probably wouldn't taste as good after one day of refrigeration.  As I devoured the final spoonful, the last surprise was a steamed piece of basil, that left a strong flavor in my mouth, one of which I could actually taste.