In 2016, cancer issues began limiting food I can digest, until I felt constantly famished, longing even for junk food I'd shunned since the 1970s.

Even while still living and teaching in Songkhla, Thailand, I gave up raw fruit and vegetables, most meat, (except for a certain brand of canned Thai spicy mackerel), coconut milk, monthong durian..all favorite foods.

Still, I like to think about all the Thai food I used to eat, now seeming like "food porn."

Every morning I walked to a sidewalk vendor several blocks away and bought rolls of sticky rice with mashed berry and banana cores, wrapped in banana leaves and slow roasted underground in sand pits.

YUM!!!!

Also, monthong durian, ice cold coconut milk, steamed shrimp, and dozens of exotic fruits most people have never heard of.

Photo: plate of sticky rice-fruit rolls being sold at the Ranot, Thailand, water market in 2016, when I was teaching ESL at a Buddhist temple school near Ranot.