Miscellaneous

Miracle Fruit?

By jeremyblachman

This is a totally wild article from the Times about a fruit that makes sour foods taste sweet, and this group that puts on food-tasting parties to explore what the fruit can do.  Sounds fascinating, and makes me want to try it.  Like, went to the website and would e-mail them to get on their mailing list if I wasn't worried this is all sort of code for something else and these are actually weird psychotropic drug parties, and also frankly the idea of going to any sort of rooftop party with strangers is something that makes me extremely unexcited generally, so even the idea that it's based around food isn't enough to get me actually interested.  Apparently one can buy these berries, but it's $90 for 30 of them, which seems a little excessive for something that will make food taste funny for an hour. 

(But, re: my post below, once I see what actual food costs when, say, I don't know, planning a wedding, $90 for 30 berries might seem cheap, and, hey, perhaps cheap enough to throw -- without a label -- onto a wedding buffet and completely  rock the tastebud world of all of the guests.  Hey, that's actually kind of a cool idea, no?  Hide tastebud-changing berries on the buffet table and anyone who happens to eat one gets to enjoy the rest of the wedding food in a whole new way.  In fact, since the sit-down meals at most weddings are less-than-thrilling anyway, maybe this would make them better and awesome and the taste-changing berry should be mandatory eating.  Is it scary that I'm really thinking about this as a cool thing to subject wedding guests to?  I think it would be totally awesome, if this berry is actually safe and real and this isn't some hoax being pulled on the New York Times and they're actually talking about eating poison sumac and suffering anaphylactic shock, to have stuff like this at a wedding, make it interesting and different -- maybe not just these berries, but have it be some sort of molecular gastronomy kind of thing, with liquids that taste like solids, and solids that taste like liquids, and savory desserts (mustard flavored ice cream?) and, ooh, I'm a lot more excited than I should be about a paragraph that's totally going to freak out at least one of my most loyal blog readers!)

Full post as published by Jeremy Blachman's Brand New Weblog on May 28, 2008 (boomark / email).