BEN

Monday at lunchtime I started to experience a strange bitter metallic taste in my mouth when I ate. It didn’t matter what I was eating or drinking – water, bread, coffee, fruit – all seemed to have a pretty bad aftertaste. I was really busy that day and didn’t think anything of it until dinner.

We had the pot roast that had been in the slow cooker all day, a beautiful hunk of meat simmering in a bed of carrots, potatoes, celery and onions. I carved it to serve and heaped everyone’s plate with that and fluffy white rice. Then I tasted it – blechh! It was bitter and left a strange aftertaste. At first I thought it was the meat and that I had done a bad job in the seasoning, but everyone else finished their plates, and even had seconds. Clearly everyone was enjoying the dinner but me. I still thought they were either just really hungry or trying to spare my feelings.

The next day, breakfast tasted the same – metallic and bitter. And lunch as well. I was baffled. I googled my symptoms and realized that it was because last Saturday night I had eaten pizza topped with spinach and pine nuts! I am not kidding. Check out these links:

http://www.healthnutforlife.org/2010/05/random-acts-of-health-bitter-tongue-aka.html

http://www.epicurious.com/articlesguides/blogs/editor/2009/05/got-pine-mouth.html

It seems there are pine nuts from China that have a history of giving people that bad metallic taste. Not everyone is affected, and some have it for a few days and some for weeks.

It was so random – who knew?? I tried to find a cure. Last night Daniel made me some ginger tea and that seemed to lessen the bitter flavor somewhat. At least today I was able to eat my tomato sandwich, although there was still some aftertaste which I hope goes away soon. (It seems like this would be a great way to go on a diet, though.)

I think what I am most relieved about was that the pot roast I made apparently really was delicious and that I am not a horrible cook!