Pine Mouth...Gagk!

“This coffee tastes terrible. Everything tastes bitter today. I don’t know what’s going on.”

“Me too, everything has a bitter after-taste. It’s gross.”

“Both of us have it? What could be causing it?”

“Pine mouth”

“Pine mouth, eh? That sounds like something you made up just now.”

“Nope, it’s a real thing.”

That’s not how the conversation actually went, but it condenses two weird weeks into a single dialogue.

It all started because I was bored at the grocery store. I started buying unusual ingredients while mentally concocting a recipe, which would undoubtedly be a big hit at dinner time. Among the groceries I purchased was a container of pine nuts. These were the very first pine nuts I had ever bought in my whole entire life.

I made dinner, which was not a hit, and about a day later, everyone in the house was complaining of a bitter taste in their mouths. I was consuming a lot of sugar trying to cleanse the bitterness away. This went on for about two weeks. It was the strangest thing.

About a week in, we started investigating to find a cause and found some medical research based on a number of cases of people experiencing the same bitter taste after consuming pine nuts. The research indicated that the offending pine nuts had all originated in China and had, in fact, come from a specific breed of tree in China.

I took a look at the package I had bought and discovered that there was no mention anywhere, of where the pine nuts had come from; only that they had been prepared FOR a company in Mississauga.

If I can’t find out where my pine nuts have come from before I eat them and have them ruin all food for two weeks, guess what? I won’t be buying pine nuts at all. I went this long without them. I reckon I can go on without them again.