Like many modern friendships that are born in our era of social networking, I first "met" Ezra Caldwell online in 2006. I discovered his Flickr account through mutual contacts and was drawn to his extraordinary images of dancers, his beautiful wife Hillary and photogenic pooch Putney. We also happen share a deep devotion to bicycles and food, and he regularly chronicled his endeavors in frame building and cooking.

Ezra shared his thoughts with me about cooking via email: "I think it's important that people eat at home a certain amount of the time. For us it's pretty much every night. We eat out about once every three weeks. There's something about the time spent in the kitchen in the evening that is a real relaxer for me. A meditation. I often drag out food preparation just because I enjoy that time of day."

While I had lived in Ezra's hometown of New York City for 13 years, it wasn't until I moved all the way across the country to San Francisco that I finally met Ezra in real life. In the spring of 2007, he and another Flickr friend, Yohei Morita, embarked on a trip throughout the U.S. to share bicycle adventures and meet other Flickr comrades. They met me and a mutual Flickr friend, Judah, during their visit to the Bay Area.

And like many modern time-pressed friendships, we stayed in touch in the virtual realm. And so it was through Flickr that I learned in August of 2008, Ezra was diagnosed with colorectal cancer. In true Ezra fashion, who has never shied away from baring it all, he started a blog, "Teaching Cancer to Cry," as a "a way to keep people up-to-date as treatment progresses, and a way for me to look back when all this is over and reminisce."

Six weeks of chemotherapy and radiation treatments began. Ezra wrote about the tough days, yet still managed to make us laugh, too. He even got married along the way.

When he went into remission, he started posting recipes for spinach salad, sudado de pescado, and stewed chicken with olives. His lush images of his elaborate meals mirrored his renewed energy.

Then in September of 2010, the cancer returned. He resumed his documentation of the grim realities of his second round with the disease.

Through all of this, Ezra still found time and the desire to cook.

"Over the last bunch of months, I was really laid low. I was in a lot of pain, a lot of the time. Having to take pain killers. Spending a lot of time in bed. Happily, though, this time around we found an anti-emetic (anti-nausea) drug that worked! So for most of the winter I would just save up my energy during the day to be able to get out of bed and cook some evening. It meant a lot to me to be able to continue to contribute to the household. I've always done nearly all the cooking, and didn't want treatment to interrupt that. Just about everything else went on the back burner."

Cooking also ignited yet another creative project.

"I started making videos, partly because I was getting back into making video and needed a subject, and here was this thing that I was doing every day anyway! I like to encourage people to cook. I think it's a little strange when people don't know how, or believe they can't. Cooking is easy! It's not hard to make yourself really good food.

So I started putting instructions for cooking on the blog, and later the videos with the instructions. I think it's sort of a great way to learn. See something done REALLY fast, and then read some instructions for it. You've still got an image in your head of what it looked like, and the instructions can be pretty bare bones.

I don't like the word "recipe." I feel as though there's an implication with "recipes" that makes people believe that there's a RIGHT way to cook a certain dish. That sort of takes the fun out of it. Instead I try to write instructions for dishes that maybe include some useful technique, like braising, or using an ice bath, that people will be able to include in their arsenal of approaches in the future. I love it when people write to me and say, "I tried that dish, but I changed it in this way and that, and it came out great!" Aha...you've been bitten."

Here's his artful visual rendition of "Braised Lamb Shanks" that will make your mouth water.

Braised Lamb Shanks from Fast Boy.

You can find his complete archive of instructions and food videos on his blog. He's since finished up his latest round of treatment and recently prepared a sumptuous lobster dinner with a friend who's battling breast cancer. May the cooking and celebrations continue for a long, long time.

Writing about food and baking and cooking means celebrating joy. But there are many whose bodies and minds fight for and with daily sustenance. Whether it be because of one's class or struggles with weight, food can often be seen as the enemy. For an alcoholic whose disease is sparked into action by alcohol, becoming abstinent does not mean death, as it would be with food for a person with an eating disorder. Eating is something we all have to do to live, no matter what our circumstance.

A number of years ago I was met with the challenge of cooking for someone undergoing intensive rounds of chemotherapy and radiation. Chemotherapy is an umbrella name for hundreds, if not thousands, of combinations of specific cell-killing drugs used to attack various cancers. Every regimen, every specific "cocktail" of chemo, produces a whole slew of side-effects which affect people differently. Depending on any number of factors concerning the disease and its host, the specified chemotherapy treatment varies.

I did not consult books when I began cooking for my friend. I consulted her because I knew what she had liked before and we worked together to make food she could eat, had an appetite for, and could keep down. Because chemotherapy is poisonous and can kill the person before eradicating the disease, it is given in rounds with various lengths of time between them. It has a cumulative effect and one can only continue the regimen if one recovers enough in that time to do it again. Because the person undergoing treatment gets weaker as time goes on, and has no idea how the side-effects will progress, it's important to go with the flow and try a number of different foods prepared all sorts of ways to see what hits the mark.

There were a few guidelines I was following. Strong flavors such as garlic and onions, and all spicy additions were nixed, although onions cooked down very slowly until dark and caramelized became sweet enough to eat. Salt and pepper were omitted completely over time. Acidity in all forms was also left out. That meant no fruit, vinegar, black tea or coffee. Although sometimes very ripe fruit could be handled in small doses. Sugary sweetness went out the door although not-so-sweet baked goods could be enjoyed if their textures were easy to chew and swallow. Ginger was helpful in all forms because it is has anti-nausea properties, as does watermelon, which was news to me. Also watermelon is mostly water so it helped with hydration.

If the person you are caring for is open to using marijuana to stimulate hunger or as an antiemetic (a drug that prevents or reduces nausea and vomiting), there are a number of ways a person can ingest it. Doctor prescribed, or otherwise. Locally there a few people licensed to use marijuana in foods they make for people with cancer. For obvious legal reasons I cannot link to them but I found one such person and he made baked goods and confections easily ingestible by my friend.

My friend and I joked that it was with very bland foods she took most pleasure. A number of times internal mouth sores flared up and were so painful they made it impossible for her to want to eat anything, although cool, bland, soft foods helped soothe her. I cooked rice, vegetables, chicken, tofu in almost no oils or seasonings. Soup was always around. I made custards and brought fruit still warm from the farmers' markets. Plain yogurt garnished a lot of plates.

Cooking and baking for someone with a life-threatening illness changed my perspective about food and my profession forever. Until daily sustenance is unattainable or the enemy, it's impossible to understand what powers a simple meal holds. It is an honor to care for someone dying in this way because food is life and to give a person in constant pain one small sensual pleasure is an immeasurable gift and grace.

More information can be found here at The Cancer Project.