Cape party weekend, Miracle Fruit

[juldea]

This weekend's party was hella fun, so thanks to laura47 for inviting me and ingratiating me to the people I didn't know.

We flavor-tripped! If anyone doesn't know about Miracle Fruit, you should. It's a real berry that binds to your taste buds to make sour and bitter things taste sweet. It's completely legal, non-toxic, etc etc, and these days you can buy pills of the stuff online. laura47 had several boxes shipped to her for the party, and there were trays of normally bad food that we all selected from. Some of the things I ate and their changes:

lemons tasted like the best lemon candy, sherbet lemons. I seriously put whole slices of lemon into my mouth like oranges and sucked on them, and mmm.

limes were very similar and turned into limeade-like flavors

dill pickles were ruined as they tasted like sweet&sour pickles :(

bananas tasted the same

strawberries turned into the most delicious thing ever

Babybel cheese wheels tasted like cream cheese frosting

sliced ginger was like candied ginger

Guinness turned into some kind of odd ... completely non-foul, non-beer fizzyish drink. I'm normally fine with Guinness anyway, but this was something special.

cucumbers I normally HATE, but they became a very non-offensive melon flavor

raw cranberries were so tasty I had to remind myself not to eat too many or I'd hurt my stomach

Vodka and lime juice was a sweet, tasty drink. People who drank raw vodka said it tasted like soap.

There were people taking swigs of vinegar like it was juice.

I had orange strawberry banana juice which was amazingly sweet like a kid's drink.
I know many other people tried other things, boozes and other foods, but the acids I was eating but not tasting got to my stomach and I stopped trying things for fear of feeling ill. But still! The stuff is amazing, and I can't wait to try it again. I need to try it with dark chocolate!

Um, what else. For such long nights (I got very little sleep over the weekend) there's not much to share that's not "you had to be there"... I took a (clothed) bath in the master bathroom's jacuzzi tub that has color-changing lights, and that was nice and warm and comfortable. I went on a $150 grocery run for the party. I watched people spin colored light-up poi balls. There were movies. There was a lot of chilling, sitting around chatting with people about crazy things. laura47 stressed out about her party duties and taking care of people. A guy did some awesome hand juggling with pool balls. I didn't play a single game of pool or Race for the Galaxy, which I'm still boggling about! I sat on the porch for sunrise. I bought chocolate mint Bailey's and didn't even crack it open. I watched YouTube videos and spouted memes at people. I nearly sliced the tip of my finger off cutting a loaf of bread, and still managed to take off a good disc of skin. Ow.

So all and all a good couple of days partying, a good escape and relaxation... though not a lot of sleep. Thank you laura47!!

Comments

[oddharmonic.livejournal.com]

I saw miracle fruit on ThinkGeek awhile back and was debating getting some to play with after Christmas. Your rave review only makes me more determined to not forget it in my holiday shopping!

I hope your finger heals quickly!

Also, the chocolate mint Bailey's is delicious.

[juldea.livejournal.com]

Re: Bailey's - alone, or do you have any awesome drink ideas for it?

pretend I'm replying to juldea unless you find this interesting

[etherial.livejournal.com]

It is fantastic straight up. I usually drink it as an "after-dinner mint" at SCA events. You may recall I spent most of Halloween '07 wandering around in my silk robe taking little sips from a nip of mint chocolate Bailey's. I cannot stress enough its awesomeness.

Re: pretend I'm replying to juldea unless you find this interesting

[oddharmonic.livejournal.com]

Of course I find it interesting! Wandering around in a silk robe having a nip sounds fabulous.

I am almost a non-drinker, so my gamut of will-consider-drinking beverages are basically various flavors of Bailey's (the caramel is pretty decent, but not as awesome as the chocolate mint) and those little pre-mixed Kahlua bottled drinks.

[goldbug.livejournal.com]

Hmm, I don't remember where I heard about Miracle Fruit before, but thanks to your review I will definitely have to try it!

[bleemoo.livejournal.com]

Huh.

I am intrigued by miracle fruit, but am also creeped out enough by "things what change my perception of things" that I'm worried that I'll panic if I try it. What does it taste like itself? Assuming you're not actually tasting anything, can you feel it working in any way?

[juldea.livejournal.com]

I find it very odd to be panicked by miracle fruit, but I don't know how your head works. :) We weren't eating straight miracle fruit, we were eating it in tablet form (like you get here: http://www.miraclefruitworld.com/) and it tasted basically like a fruity Tums. It was slightly chalky but otherwise pretty bland and inoffensive. You cannot feel it working at ALL except in that you are trying to swish the chalkiness around your mouth to coat all of your taste buds. But after you do that an swallow, it's a thought of, "Um, is it working?" until you try to eat something and go, "Holy crap!!" :)

[bleemoo.livejournal.com]

Panic is not the right word. My concern is thatt I will experience one of two things that happen to me occasionally. Firstly, I have very strong vasovagal episodes whenever I have any medical procedures that are not entirely benign and unnoticeable. This includes the obvious ones like getting an injection or having blood drawn, but it also includes topical anesthetic or the eye-drops that eye doctors use to test for glaucoma, so if one could feel the berries working in any way, I'd be worried about triggering that. Secondly, because my vasovagal nerve response is so strong (I passed out when the allergist was doing skin tests, not because of allergens but just due to the feeling of the applicator on my skin), I've developed a small phobia of any situation that might trigger it. I also have phobias of bridges and of butterflies, so like you imply, my head doesn't exactly work in the same way as most people's heads, although a cursory google turns up a support group for lepidopterophobes and large amounts of literature documenting the existence of gephyrophobia, so I'm not as abnormal as you might think. In that regard, at least.

[juldea.livejournal.com]

Aha, more makes sense now. There's none of that kind of sensation with the berries "working". It's just you've eaten a thing and now things taste different, but there are no physical sensations. :)