|
Richard Jernigan -> RE: Do you like MARMITE...?? (Oct. 27 2016 3:36:42)
|
I believe I may have tasted Vegemite several years ago. The chief recollection that comes to mind is, "Don't ever do that again!"
Still, it seems possible this is just an intellectual aversion.
To explain the difference between an intellectual aversion and a physical one:
In my early days as a 16-year old freshman at University--early nights, actually--on one occasion I drank way, way too much Bourbon whiskey. A couple of weeks later I was offered a glass of Bourbon. As I brought it to my lips, as soon as I could smell it my elbow stopped bending. It just stopped. The only direction my arm would move was to move the whiskey away from my nose.
I have never cultivated a taste for Bourbon, though to be polite to my connoisseur friends, I can now take a sip or two--but I really like Scotch.
A few years after the Bourbon experience I was traveling solo in Mexico. I came down with a pretty serious case of Montezuma's Revenge. My brother calls it, with greater technical and political correctness, traveler's diarrhea. When presented with a new strain of bacteria, your gut sometimes loses its equilibrium, and the new strain flourishes almost out of control, though you may have been living happily with a different strain of the same species for years. Some of my Mexican friends used to get sick when they visited Austin. It's been decades since I have had it, having traveled pretty much over the globe, except for sub-Saharan Africa and Antarctica.
In Mexico I was feeling really bad: feverish, weak, dehydrated, bad enough to be a bit worried. I checked in to the Lincoln Hotel on Calle Cuauhtemoc, just off the Avenida Juarez in Mexico City. The rooms were clean and cheap, and the hotel had a well known restaurant, of much higher quality than its other accommodations.
Being quite hungry I ordered a big bowl of chicken soup from room service, and some black tea which I brewed up pretty strong. Some thoughtful citizen in the kitchen sprinkled the soup heavily with fresh cilantro leaves (coriander, Chinese parsley). For about 20 years I could not put fresh cilantro in my mouth. After that the aversion faded fairly quickly, and nowadays I really enjoy it.
As for Vegemite, once was enough. I suspect Marmite fits the criterion, "If I don't ever taste it, it would still be too soon."
RNJ
|
|
|
|
