Chasing Trade Winds

I didn’t want to mention it before, but for the past couple days I’ve been suffering from a cruel, painful, no doubt fatal medical ailment. I’ll get back to posting my favorite photos and tidbits momentarily, but first, you must be warned!

It started Tuesday night, right as I was cooking up a delicious spicy eggplant pasta in Budapest. I poured a nice glass of red wine, and took a taste of the garlic, onions, spicy peppers and cubed eggplant as they sizzled on the stove. BLEGH. What the hell is that? My mouth had turned on me. It was full of the most awful, bitter, downright FOUL taste I had ever experienced. Jesus, yeah I had faked it with the eggplant, and I know some say you have to salt and drain and perform all sorts of complicated wizardry before cooking it, but it totally worked last week and tasted great. Is this what happens when you get cocky in the kitchen?

Anyway, by now I had enough food for a family of four, so the boyfriend had to eat it. I said nothing as I served him a heaping bowl. He took a bite, and said, “wow, that’s amazing,” before scarfing down the rest. Okay, I’m clearly insane, I thought, as I tried again. Terrible. Maybe with more wine? Ugh, the wine that had tasted perfectly fine a couple nights ago now tasted like melted ear wax mixed with a dash of hobo vomit.

I took two charcoal tablets and went to bed, deciding I was having gustatory hallucinations and obviously needed sleep.

The next morning, we had to wake up early to tidy up, pack, and hop on our 9 am train to Vienna. I got up feeling quite groggy and tired, and a bit unsure whether the horrific results of my attempts to feed myself the night before had actually happened. Half asleep, I made some instant coffee and got going cleaning up the kitchen. I won’t belabor this point, but the coffee was even worse than the food and wine. I wanted to rip my tongue out. Now you’re going to deny me COFFEE? Just kill me now.

So it’s Thursday now. Yesterday I tried, unsuccessfully, to eat all types of food, each tasting worse than the one before it. But when not eating or drinking, I was fine.

This morning we woke up in Kremsmuenster, Austria to find that my uncle had left us a beautiful spread of fresh rolls, home-made jam, and juice, before heading to work. Also, an espresso machine. Hallelujah, no instant today! But one tentative bite from a roll was met with immediate gagging. Surely, if I am still suffering from this cruel joke of an affliction, it must be a sign of imminent death, no?

Enter google (aka Dr. House). Turns out there are thousands, seriously, of people who have posted on all sorts of bulletin boards about this phenomenon. It even has a name.

Let me back up. You see, on Sunday we had gone to visit an old friend in Budapest. She’s quite ill, so instead of lunch we went for tea, and she sweetly offered us some cookies and a bowl of nuts. She, sadly, doesn’t get too many visitors, so I was quite sure at the time that the nuts were a tad stale. But I was trying not to eat too many cookies, so I had several fistfuls of the sunflower, walnut, small pine nut mixture.

Those of you who have known about this forever, and kept your mouths shut, should be ashamed. Those of you who don’t, let me fulfill my duty as a human and inform you that there is this vile thing called pine mouth. Apparently thousands have reported - for years now - that after eating small pine nuts, often from China, they can’t eat or drink anything without feeling like they need to gargle with some sort of solvent. For up to TWO WEEKS. In a particularly cruel twist, red wine, coffee and bread are among the worst offenders.

So that’s happened. Just in time for the holidays! If you have any tips on how to stop this torture, and don’t message me or reply, your karma will take a serious hit.