Tasting Food

My mother is obsessed with bringing home any snack food that has been recently created, especially if it's a flavor that probably shouldn't be. She honestly needs a separate storage closet just for the bags of various chips she buys that are sampled, rejected, yet never thrown away. She bought me a bag of sweet roasted corn potato chips, because she knows I love corn a whole lot and she's seen me eat potato chips. I ate about five of those chips, only because I was amused by my mouth's "oh, come on!" reaction to them. Imagine the flavors of two great things - two great things that hate each other, and brawl about it on your tongue.

Some history on my mother's new relationship with food ... my step father told me she once ate a frozen roll that was four years past the expiration date. I don't at all have a problem believing this, since there was a package of just-expired bakery-bought cupcakes when I moved here in July and they are still in the fridge, and it's October dammit, despite my trying to throw them away. She insists she'll eat them.

Which brings us to my current experiment - seeking out food items which I'd probably never eat unless I was trying to win a bet or find something to talk about on my blog.

Let's begin with tamarind nectar.

Just one letter away from being monkey juice.

Doesn't that look appetizing? It tastes like your gums are bleeding. Granted, that could have been the indestructible can it came in. After my first taste, I put it right back into the fridge, spilling a little bit on the shelf. I thought I'd cleaned it up, but when my step dad tried to move it later as I slumbered, it was so very stuck that he ended up spilling more of it during his unsticking efforts. If I were him, I'd have thrown it at my bedroom door, like my mom always did with anything I left somewhere in her line of sight while she was also in the mood to be throwing stuff.

Basically, don't drink this unless you require a liquid glue that comes in a weapon and your mouth doesn't taste enough like blood that day.

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Let's eat something in a pocket now.

You can feel the organic lack of GMOs right through the box.

I love spinach and feta! What could go wrong?

I use paper plates, because ripping the cooked food away from the paper is half the fun.

That is what it looked like cooked. It's also what it looked like frozen, but trust me, it was hot enough to make you regret your lack of patience yet again. One thing I can say for this is that it's clearly magic of some sort. The spinach and feta on its own tasted the way almost anyone would expect - pretty good, once it made contact with a non-sizzled taste bud. But that pocket. That virtuous, pasty, tricksy pocket. Its lack of flavor was so power-filled, it drew in all hints of flavor within the realm of my bedroom and rendered them non-existent. I even tried licking my wall and ... nothing. Nothing has a taste as long as that dough exists.

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Something sweet, now.

Cacao to cacao.

Dark? Sure. Sinful? Probably. That bar is nearly as long as my foot. Pear? Eh.

I expected so much weirder from this, but I couldn't detect any pear, and I'm not hard of pear-detecting at all. Trust me, you put something pear-flavored in my mouth, and I will immediately report tasting pear. This is just a highly edible dark chocolate and almond bar. If you like that sort of thing, please come over and help me finish this. I swear I didn't touch it with my foot.

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They go with everything.

These are fantastically fun, although impossible to eat once you apply them, unless you've applied them to a friend. I did not think this one through properly. But, I definitely got quite the reaction today when I had to run to the middle school to pick up my mom's Market Day order.

I have a decision to make, though. Do I risk life and nipple to rip these off now, find the patience to wait for my night sweats to melt them off, or invite a non-diabetic friend over to treat me like a moveable, if slightly reluctant sugar rush?

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Not a casserole, a PIE.

Let's heat this, according to the package directions.

Hurry up and bring me a fork!

What can be said about something that smells like unwashed socks and only has one slice of black olive laying on it? This was edible. I know this because I got it into my face and it didn't come back out of it immediately. I can't confirm that it has three layers, because the gluten-free tortilla broke apart like someone on hour eight of an interrogation for a crime they never wanted to commit.

This is something you have to eat quickly, before it cools down and before it's exposed to too much Earth air, which clearly rejects its very existence. This is something you might happily eat if you were deployed, because it tastes better than sucking on your uniform. If you're not in the military, this is something you should Hasselhoff from your living room floor after pouring a lot of strong beer down your throat.

Eating it ended as most unpleasant things do - with a measure of relief, but way too much salt all over my bed. I almost felt as though I should keep the tray, because I suspected this meal would enter me, then reassemble itself after incorporating the unholy amount of corn I'm always eating, then emerge as a fully-formed, yet slightly improved version of its past self I could convince the dog to eat.

Cedar Lane gluten-free Enchilada Pie is preposterous as a human food.

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