Some of y'all are sick.

It took covid to make me think that coffee tasted divine . Better than tea.

The only logical conclusion? Some of y'all must be sick - all the time. :-D  

I'm still not sure how healthy Aussies in general are. Vegemite/Marmite!?

In case y'all are wondering what this post is really about, it's a review of the foods that I've been tasting the last few days with your inspiration (see previous post). Here are the deets:

Testing E's Covid-induced taste buds - candid notes

Hot chocolate - smooth, creamy and mildly sweet on tip of tongue. Moved to bitterness on back and sides. Chocolate taste almost entirely missing.

Chai tea soy latte - a little too sweet. I don’t taste the soy. There’s a delightful light physical sensation of spritz that I think is spice. Faint notes of holiday flavor.

Jasmine tea - can’t taste the jasmine at all. No floral notes. Slight hint of green tea. Slightly acrid edge, but mostly tasteless.

Nutella - tastes weirdly smooth on top of tongue… like scotch. Hazelnut flavor is faint but nice. Bitter on sides of tongue. Way too sweet. I don’t care for it and threw away the rest of the pack (single serving. Of course I wouldn’t toss a whole jar).

Pizza - amazeballs. Y’all were right about tomato being delicious and the pepperoni creates a nice feel in the mouth - almost like texture.

Strawberry rhubarb soda - way too tart and tangy.

Ginger lime soda - soooo sour! Yikes. Major pucker. I barely taste ginger… adds a little pizzazz? This also tastes slightly bitter.

Sprite - my favorite cold drink over the last 4 days. Loooooove it! Wonderfully balanced flavor. FYI, I normally don’t drink straight Sprite… I like it best mixed with OJ.

Lasagna - also amazeballs.

Granola and milk - my go to night snack. Mostly the same except for a bitter note.

Cilantro - remarkably fresh and earthy. Then again, I don’t normally eat just cilantro leaves.

Blueberry oatmeal - I love how Kirk makes this. I couldn’t eat more than 1 bite today. Extremely vivid and tastes wrong with a bitter flavor.

Key lime pie - wow! This is tangy and delicious, but maybe a bit too tangy for multiple bites. The whip cream though - I could eat buckets of it. So. Smooth.

Ketchup - I normally despise ketchup. This made my mouth instantly pucker and was full of flavor and I might like it for dipping, but I’m not sure I can get over my former hatred.

Black olive - also a food I normally hate. The aftertaste is still disgusting and mega bitter. The initial taste was actually rather good… very juicy.

Marmite (no vegemite available) - I can’t smell well, but I can still smell this. EW and ow at the same time! This made my tongue prickle the most so far, and the flavor was extremely bitter and powerfully rotten. What are Aussies thinking?!?

Wasabi - I thought the marmite gave me prickles, but the wasabi lit everything up. It was 10x more intense than I recall and I started coughing a lot. Not going to try anything else that is spicy for quite some time.

Coffee - I tasted the latte that Kirk made and I am sad to report that it was smooth and full of flavor and purely delicious. I drank more coffee later instead of tea.

Saltine - extremely salty. Bleck.

Yellow Bell Pepper - this is so delicious. Juicy and full of flavor. One of the only food items that is both very healthy and wildly appetizing.

Banana - This is also delicious. Much more vibrant than usual. 

Cinnamon roll (variety 1) - homemade, by our good friend Don (y'all might remember that he helped construct the Ursula set). I totally loved this. Not too sweet, probably because it's a more bready type of cinnamon roll - but the cinnamon is divine. I went very light on frosting, but probably would have preferred none, as that was too sweet.

Cinnamon roll (variety 2) - from a bakery. Tasted strangely dry and rough on the tongue and was also much too sweet with less pop of cinnamon... had a slight bitter edge. Don wins this round.

Arugula - woah! I get more mustard and spicy from this, in a good way. Was very subtle before - but now is pretty dang fun. Also tried with a very small amount of vinaigrette and enjoyed the vibrant salad.

Overall, it seems that I’ve become very sensitive to tangy and salty, and those flavors can easily overwhelm my current tastebuds. Bitterness is the most common taste in everything and it destroys a lot of food for me. I think sweet sometimes triggers bitter. Also, the sensation of smooth and prickly/rough is strange. I’ve never had flavors turn into textures before, but there is a tangible sensation that accompanies this flavor set. Really weird.

Final note: my morning black tea is not as good as usual. It is lackluster; there is no depth of flavor. I feel troubled by this - especially since I liked coffee more than tea the last two days. I hope this goes back to normal soon. It would make me a little sad to actually prefer coffee over tea.

Thanks for the fun tastebud testing ideas, everyone!