Pine Mouth and the Quinoa Salad that Wasn't

It dawned on me yesterday that everything had been tasting bitter, since, uh, since Sunday! (Why it took me three days to notice the pattern is still a mystery.) Poblanos, wine, salad, everything. After this realization, I came to the hysterical logical conclusion that I must have a stress-induced neurological disorder. A quick search on the internet did not reveal this high on the list of potential diagnoses, but pregnancy, GERD, and a hernia were. Not liking any of those answers, my research continued and I noticed that food blog posts about pine nuts kept popping up. What does that have to do with my symptom?

Everything, it seems. After eating a dish including pine nuts, I apparently developed pine mouth. Some people develop a reaction after eating pine nuts resulting in a bitter, metallic taste that can last a couple of weeks! I've eaten plenty of pine nuts in my day, and this is my first experience with metal mouth. It's been proposed that certain pine nuts may be rancid, and those imported from China seem particularly risky. The weird thing is that not everyone reacts with the bitter taste after consuming them. I checked my recently purchased batch from a local grocery store chain, and sure enough, they are from China. From now on, it's back to the Italian brand I used to buy that never caused me this problem.

As you can imagine, the perception that I've been chewing on pencil lead every time I consume something is not so helpful for creating recipes. I created this quinoa salad before I realized my tasters were out of whack.



Tastes bitter to me. MD says it's bland. Oh well. I will leave the cooking up to the rest of you for now! Have a great weekend, and let's be careful out there (about pine nuts).