First meal of the day: leftover shrimp Creole, from New Year’s Eve. The small cold that showed up on December 31 has become a monster raving loony head-and-chest cold. I’m pretty sure I’m going to die from this thing, probably by sundown, and when I do, I’m going to come back to my wife, who says men whine too much about colds, and tell her, in my spectral neener-neener voice, I told you so!

I made that shrimp Creole, by the way, from a John Besh recipe that puts a south Asian spin on the Louisiana standard. Besh has you add crushed lemon grass, chopped fresh basil, and chopped fresh mint. You can’t taste any of these things in the sauce, but it does have a noticeably bright, tangy flavor that you don’t usually have in shrimp Creole. Recommended.