Coconut Tomato Bisque

I am generally an affable, well-mannered, elbows off the friggin’ table kind of person. I think about helping old ladies cross the street, apologize to trash cans when I accidentally bump into them, and smile at little kids in a non-pedophilic way. I even call my mom once in a while! (Mom, if you’re reading this, I’ll call you soon, I promise…)

All this drastically changes when I start getting hungry. The first sign: I start to feel slightly annoyed at the weather. The second sign is when I accidentally stub my toe on the table, and it’s all the table’s fault, and I start scolding the table for being rude. The third, when all I can focus on is how nice a warm avocado tempeh sandwich would be. The fourth symptom, and the most dangerous sign, is when I start looking at my friends and ponder the relative tastiness of each one of them…and I turn into an irrational angry snappy being.

I have learned to manage/live with what I now call the “Angry Hungry Hippo Disease“, or AHHD. The acronym looks like ADHD but it is treated with granola bars instead of amphetamine. (Although amphetamines might help treat AHHD as well, since it lowers appetite.)

Here’s a tip that I tried for a while when I wanted to impress my extremely hot now-boyfriend! I used to carry chocolate bars in my pockets whenever I would go on dates with him so that whenever I felt twinges of annoyance, I would nosh on the bars for an instant mood boost so I would not look like a raving maniac.

Apparently I neglected to remember this little tidbit when I went to Hawaii with my boyfriend. Here we were, driving along in one of the most beautiful places on Earth, and he wants to watch the sun set over the ocean. (Can everyone say “Awwww….”) But by the time we get there, I am so hungry that I am muttering, “I hate fucking sunsets, they’re stupid, who wants to see them anyways, GODDDDD why are we looking at this, can we go nowww??!!”

And the car ride home is two hours long. I think I managed to angrily throw a hissy fit about how stupid the car was, how the whole island was useless, and about every single miniscule irksome thing that he had ever done…in the span of 30 seconds. Remember, I am already at stage 4 AHHD, and there are still two more hours trapped in a car with me!

Thankfully, my boyfriend is as intelligent as he is handsome, so he forced us to pull over at a restaurant to eat dinner before continuing onwards, despite my endless protests of, “gawd, I hate restaurants, I hate everything about everything!!” I distinctly remember still complaining about how much I despised juice when the first sip of this luscious coconut tomato bisque reached my mouth…and then…I was fine. A little sheepish about my temper tantrum, but mostly back to normal.