I wrote the menu, right, as a bit of a joke back in 2014. “Dinner at the Anosmia Restaurant” was written when I was still struggling with smell loss and parosmia in particular. Every meal in a restaurant felt like torture. Nothing appealed.  The smells in restaurants, as weak as they might have been, felt sick-making. Even decoding the food on the basis of texture was a disagreeable chore.

Looking at this several years later, it does bring to mind a couple of points. Parosmia aside, there is much to consider about food beyond what we usually think of as straight “taste”. Broken down into attributes like aroma, true-taste (is it salty? sweet?), texture, mouthfeel, temperature–and how these things contrast one another in your mouth–means that every mouthful is worthy of consideration. One of the first meals I remember enjoying eating after my smell loss was a salad with fried goat’s cheese, toasted pine nuts and roasted figs–all on a bed of greens. It was simultaneously salty, crunchy, sweet, gooey, bitty, and more.

I invite anyone with a smell problem to try this if you have a problem with food: break down your observations of your food to smaller and smaller experiences. It’s like the “raisin mindfulness” experiment. Look at the smallest mouth experience as if through a microscope. There’s always more going on than meets the eye–or nose.

Above all, don’t give up. We need to eat to live (even if we no longer live to eat). Keep trying, and keep looking for a small number of foods that you can take pleasure in.