's motd Sun Aug 16, 2009 - Tastebuds

[Guest guest]

10,000

Sunday, 16 August 2009

Did you know? The average human tongue has over 10,000 taste buds. (My own tongue has more like 30,000!) At a very young age, my parents cultivated my taste buds. My folks had traveled all over the world and brought home recipes that they cooked for me and my brother, Lenny. They could cook French, Italian, Spanish, German and Chinese foods with so much flair!

Oh, you should have seen the two of them in the kitchen. As they were finishing up preparing one of their fabulous meals, they'd turn to Lenny and me to say, "Just wait 'til you boys taste this!"And did we ever taste a lot of good food at our house! But it didn't end there. Seems on every corner of New Orleans' French Quarter, there was an eatery that made my taste buds just about sparkle with anticipation. So as you can see, I simply loved the taste of food because I was just raised that way. And probably, you were too!

There are three tastes I want to talk about today that really tantalize our taste buds. The first is sweet. And let me tell you, there was always something sweet at 926 St. Louis Street! Oh! There were candy bars, cookies, fancy pastries from the Four Seasons Bakery, mmmm! And of course, let's not forget the ice cream! (You scream, I scream...everybody screams...for ice cream!) Sweets taste so good, don't they? From the very first bite, you get that sugary little buzz from them. The next taste is salty. We had a pair of salt & pepper shakers in our house. One pair stayed in our kitchen and you'd find the other set on our dining room table. And oh yes, that salt shaker was always a-shakin' in our house! I put salt on my eggs, fried chicken, sliced tomatoes and mashed potatoes. And when my mom and dad took us to the movies, I always got popcorn...good-old salty popcorn to entertain my taste buds as my eyes were being entertained by the movie. I can remember once salting an ear of corn on the cob. I tried so hard to get salt on every single kernel and...I did! The taste of salt really made my taste buds stand up, almost as if they were saluting!

Greasy is the third taste on my list. Being raised in New Orleans meant being raised on the taste of fried foods. We fried just about everything down in the Crescent City! I mentioned the fried chicken earlier but there were also fried shrimp, fried oysters and, of course, the French fries! (Seems everything in New Orleans came with an order of French fries, even dessert. LOL!) First that smell of the greasy fried food gets into your nose and once it enters your mouth, your taste buds begin shouting..."Here comes the grease...here comes the grease!" That grease coats your tongue and makes every one of those 10,000 taste buds feel greasy, too. Ahhhh, like when you crunch into that onion ring, you can actually feel the grease saying hello to your throat. And it seems the more grease you taste...the more you want! So I guess you could say that the taste of grease is "contagious!"

Now over the years, I've retrained my taste buds and, let me tell you, it was hard to do! Today, I don't eat a lot of sweets. I use salt hardly ever. And I limit my grease intake to once a month. And as I retrained my taste buds, guess what? I lost weight! And my taste buds get excited now about the many healthy foods I've learned to love!So, what's on your taste buds today? Come on, we're friends...you can tell me!Love,