supertaster

The Thanksgiving question

It's just under two weeks to T-day, so the husband and I have been thinking about what to do for the occasion. For the first time ever, we're many thousands of miles away from everyone in our immediate families. For several years we celebrated in Minnesota or Iowa with his parents, and the next several were either in Philly with mine or at home in New Haven with my parents and his sister from Boston visiting. A few times I made a dinner party out of Thanksgiving orphans, which was a blast.

This time, with no family within driving distance and the thought of how much we're already going to be spending on Christmas airfares making me queasy, I think we're on our own. I was thinking it might be fun to have a destination Thanksgiving, like in Napa, but couldn't dig up anything online. Even a local restaurant that does something special for the holiday could be good. One year when we were in Connecticut I thought about going to Old Sturbridge Village, just across the border in Massachusetts, one of those living history places. They were offering a traditional 19th-century Yankee Thanksgiving dinner, which sounded kind of fun until I realized it was glorified cafeteria food and something like $30 a head. It still might have been fun in a cheesy way.

So I'm calling on the collective wisdom of the Supertasters: are there tasty alternatives to cooking at home for Thanksgiving?

Super what?

The name of this blog comes from a discovery I made about my tastebuds several years ago. The Yale alumni association took a handful of professors around the country to give lectures at the various Yale Clubs, so when they came to Minneapolis, where I was living at the time, my husband and I thought it would be a good excuse to get out of work for an afternoon.

One of the lecturers was Linda Bartoshuk, a taste researcher, who as part of her presentation, passed out little squares of paper and told us to put them in our mouths and chew them. I did, and found myself chewing the most disgustingly, powerfully bitter thing I'd ever tasted. Bleahh! My husband found his mildly bitter but not overpowering. Bartoshuk explained that there was a chemical on the paper that could only be tasted if you had enough taste buds in your mouth. Some people will taste nothing, and are considered low tasters. More people would find the paper somewhat bitter, and they are medium tasters, like my husband. A few people will find it extremely bitter: super tasters: me. She showed slides of low, medium, and super taster tongues that she photographed as part of her research. The low tasters tongues were sparsely dotted with tastebuds, the medium tasters' had more, and the supertasters' tongues were densely packed with them. Yep, that was what my tongue always looked like.

Now my husband likes to give me crap about being a super taster. Whenever he thinks I'm being finicky about food, he hints that maybe it's not good enough for the super taster. I think it's kind of fun being a super taster. I feel like I have super powers... of a very limited sort. Bartoshuk's research found that super tasters tend to have specific likes and dislikes in common because of their sensitivity to taste and texture. Dislike: raw broccoli (too bitter and dry), foods that are too sweet (overloads the taste buds), foods that are too salty (same reason), food that are too fatty (lipids feel heavy on the tastebuds, which also sense touch). Like: I don't remember these so well, but I think I finally have an explanation for why as a 7 year old I had a fondness for soft French cheeses.

So here come the musings of the super taster. In my book, super taster should not equal super snob. I enjoy Peeps as much (but perhaps in a different way) as I enjoy roasted salmon in maple-soy glaze (which turned out really well when I made it at home a couple of weeks ago). Bon appetit and happy reading!