Ode to my taste buds

I never thought that living without my buds functioning would be such a tragic event. Today I´m aware that my whole life revolves around those insignificant receptors that I had never paid attention to and that today, I miss tremendously.

The day I noticed this technical failure in my system was a morning like all others. My Covid test had been positive a few minutes ago, and I was walking to my kitchen while meticulously making a mental list of the ingredients my favorite meal of the day would require.

I thought, sweet or savory? And decided on an omelet Mexican style. I started to chop onions, tomatoes, and some jalapeño peppers in very tiny cubes. The ingredients started browning on the hot oil as I poured two perfectly beaten eggs that had a splash of milk to make them fluffy.

Without letting the eggs overcook, I started pushing the mix to the inside and turned it just once, just like Julia Child recommends, then I seasoned it with salt and pepper. To finish it, I sprinkled some chopped cilantro on top with my wrist twisted just like Salt Bae.

I sat down at the table and strongly pressed the French Press I love so much when I have the time to enjoy it. I let the omelet cool down a bit and remembered I had left a multigrain slice of bread on the toaster.

Finally, I had the first bite of the eggs followed by a piece of bread and that’s when reality hit me like a deer caught in headlights.

What the heck was happening? Nothing. It tasted like nothing. I thought maybe it needed some salt, so I started twisting the salt shaker clock-wise and saw how those precious crystal from the sea fell like snow on top of the cilantro. I tried the omelet again and nothing. The eggs tasted the same as the tomatoes, the same as the peppers and the same as the bread they tasted like nothing, rien, niente, nada.

I had officially lost my sense of taste.

I felt a hole in my stomach but not just any hole and insipid hole.

Next morning, I woke up with apathy thinking there’s no point in choosing the ingredients for breakfast they would all taste identically to my palate. Questions like sweet or savory, were ridiculous to ask and I laughed out loud as I realized the absurdity of it all.

Preparing a Julia Child inspired omelet and some French pressed coffee had become something completely irrelevant.

Food had taken an existential turn and just like that, Aristoteles’s theory of form and matter was clearer than ever to me. Matter is nothing without form.

In the art world I’ve heard many times that every art piece provokes a different emotion on the person who observes it. It can be admiration, rejection or even indifference, but that emotion is developed thanks to the ability to transform matter into form. So just a simple canvas with some paint strokes has the potential to project and provoke something in all of us.

The big philosophical debates about Van Gogh’s famous painting “Shoes” where authors like Heidegger conclude that those shoes are not only just shoes, but rather a representation of the pain and tiredness that farmers had to endured in the fields during that time is the perfect example. Heidegger uses Aristoteles logic and gives form to matter.

Just image Heidegger trying to debate his theory without being able to see the painting. Without sight, his opinions would be simply irrelevant.

That’s exactly how I’ve felt these days as I try to enter a gastronomical debate without the sense of taste.

The form behind food is truly amazing. Just like art generates emotions, a dish has exactly the same power. It can transform through its flavors the state of mind of a table filled with diners. A dish can cool a heated conversation, it can ignite debates, bring people from the dead through memories and can even carve stories around just one ingredient.

All these reasons why sitting down at a table to break bread with someone is so special and unique were snatched away from me when I lost my taste. They took me away from a conversation I always loved being part of.

This Summer, my family and I made an amazing trip where we traveled to many new countries. The trip was filled with great moments, but my favorite experience happened when we went to a restaurant in Paris that specializes in one star ingredient, cheese.

It was so much fun to order a cheese plate with different intensity levels, where you had to start with the mildest and finish with the strongest. Watching all my family member’s reaction was priceless as we adventured into a cheese trip. All of us tried the same cheese at the same time and we were able to share sensations, stories, debates, discovery, and emotions, lots of emotions. Some were able to go through the six intensities, some just made it to the third one, but the interesting thing was to share what was happening to all of us as those flavors touched our palate.

Today I can’t imagine making that same trip without being able to taste anything. Traveling without tasting the countries is absurd to me. It would be a tasteless destination if you couldn’t get to know the culture and thinking of a country without its flavors.

While I’m writing this, in Mexico City a group of people that I love so much are sitting down, side by side at a table enjoying one Mexico’s most emblematic dishes, the Chiles en Nogada. A combination of flavors that requires a lot of preparation days since you must peel the Walnuts one by one as well as the pomegranates that transform the stuffed peppers into a delicious dish.

I imagine their joyous looks as they have that first bite, the thousands of stories they will all tell, the inevitable debate about the ingredients and if they have to be battered or not and how people who are no longer with us will be remembered since they enjoyed this dish so much. They will all be together sharing emotions that start in the palate.

I’m so sorry that I missed being there, but even if my Covid test would have been negative and I would have traveled to Mexico City, there’s no way I could have enjoyed that delicacy without my sense of taste. But I’m so ready to be there next year.

Today I anxiously wait for all the sensations and emotions my taste buds bring to come back. I’m excited to know which ingredient will be the one I’ll fully enjoy with all its form and all its matter. Meanwhile, I’ll keep going back to my memories, my best allies during these bland days.