Cheap wine is food.

       She thinks about several actions, none of which make the nausea and shaking disappear. Food, one. Water, another. In the end she lands on wine, glass after glass of it; this may not take the nausea away but it makes dinner more interesting. She breathes softly, trying not to reek of wine, probably (hopefully) kind of succeeding in this tactic. Dinner tastes bland, as per usual, so she spices it with curry beyond all recognition, also garlic and paprika (just in case the curry accidently, unknowingly, unwittingly sides with the plain pasta, goes on strike or something). This wine plan makes the rest of dinner fuzzy, blocky and disproportional. The morning goes quite the same. The afternoon fades quickly into evening. Even though she filled several pages with thoughts, musings, stories and emotional responses, this amounts to naught when an Italian host family charts her movement on a city-map. 

         They worry about her meatless, cheese-less, eggless diet. She worries that their taste buds may have passed out long ago (no one noticed) and resuscitation may not be a viable option at this late stage in the game. No oxygen has been delivered to that portion of the brain during the taste drought, brain damage is likely in the taste-bud receptor module. So, over the drone of flat-lining pasta and the tongues that prefer it, she peppers, salts and sauces. Plain meat, plain cheese, plain lettuce, plain plain, milquetoast. Her diet has more colors than blanched white and plain tomato red. Seriously, they should take the green out of the flag.