the black mint parade: anise reigns
Rarely do I buy Altoids, but if I do I buy wintergreen, the green pack. Before wintergreen arrived I prayed for it. I prefer it for making my breath kinder, though the red pack is fine by me if for no other reason than that it is the original. There is also the goldish pack. Ginger. Different, but interesting. I haven’t bought any but I support it. Then came the black pack and I shuddered a full-body shudder. With the same furrowed eyebrows with which I question black licorice gum I questioned this black licorice "mint". Who eats these foul nuggets?
Last night I spoke with such a person, and my search for what I thought could only be a mythical creature ended. There is someone out there to hold this position. It’s reassuring and I commend both his bravery and capacity for the dark side.
Coincidentally, because that’s the way the train treks around the galaxy’s big black hole, I’d had an e-mail dialogue about anise earlier in the day. I have uncleverly dubbed the coffee where I work "the worst coffee." Because it is. It is, however, free, so sometimes I compromise. Last week I compromised on a day when my olfactory sense had assumed supernatural prowess. I smelled watermelon on the way to work, I smelled food grease in the journals. I smelled and tasted black licorice in the worst coffee, nullifying the previous version, because this was the worst coffee.
There is a taut rope tugging and warring between me and this black flavor. I like to think I’m a superhero and that I can conquer anything. A little veni, vidi, vici in one swift bang. So it bothers me that this flavor could hold me down like some malicious Jupiter, causing my body to pucker and punch at just a sniff.
When I was in high school, my best friend and I regularly went driving on the backroads. We each bought gargantuan fountain sodas and a bag of candy. Usually jelly beans for me. I was careful not to eat the black ones, but because it was dark I occasionally overlooked one. Purple is close to black in the dark. I tossed many a black jelly bean, some partially chewed, out the window. Finally, it occurred to me that I hadn’t even tried to like them. Periodically for the next several years I tried to eat the black jelly bean. Every time: full-body shudder.
When I was in college: ouzo. I had decided to go for a run for the second time in six years. About half a mile in I thought I might collapse with a sharp pain in my side. By the time I got home I could barely stand upright. The boyfriend I was living with had bought some ouzo and rented Philosophy in the Bedroom, based on Marquis de Sade’s writing. Holding the bottle he said, It’s Greek. You’ll like it. I was a classics major and had just begun learning ancient Greek. He pressed play.
Then he opened the bottle and a cloud of full-body shudder came out. I did my damnedest, sipping it though I still felt beaten by the run. I wanted to conquer and drink like a Greek. Romantics, ideals. However, the scent made the whole room throb (which persisted for the next few days, after which I forbade ouzo to ever enter the apartment again). My body a lost-sea boat, I fell into hallucinatory fever. Turned out I had a kidney infection and was subsequently very ill for the next week—all twined up in a Marquis de Sade attempt to get exercise and master anise. Black memory path.
The flavor still beats me. Anise and I have an ongoing air hockey tournament where I continue to allow the final disc in the door instead of bolting upright like a Hercules. I don’t expect to enjoy the black jelly bean, the ouzo, the secret anise, but I’d like not to fall to its sword every time. I know. I'm mixing metaphors in the dark.
People ask me why the self-torture. Someone suggested that the body naturally rejects things that will not be good for it. This makes sense. Were I to enjoy a basket of black jelly beans with a bottle of ouzo possibly my insides would turn to tar and death. My body indeed has warned me and I do not listen. It must be absolute masochism, some purely human drive. It’s why I’m not a god or superhero.
I think I have written about part of this before. Lunacy sets in. Forgive me.
Find out more about potential black death by foul spice:
Licorice International
Organic black licorice
A short outline and history from the encyclopedia of spices
Botanical, folk-lore and herbal information
FDA advisory on star anise teas
Altoids Curiosity Shoppe
Take thine enemy's name and conquer!
Best regards,
Anise Tachibana
Northern Front Licorice Pirate
Last night I spoke with such a person, and my search for what I thought could only be a mythical creature ended. There is someone out there to hold this position. It’s reassuring and I commend both his bravery and capacity for the dark side.
Coincidentally, because that’s the way the train treks around the galaxy’s big black hole, I’d had an e-mail dialogue about anise earlier in the day. I have uncleverly dubbed the coffee where I work "the worst coffee." Because it is. It is, however, free, so sometimes I compromise. Last week I compromised on a day when my olfactory sense had assumed supernatural prowess. I smelled watermelon on the way to work, I smelled food grease in the journals. I smelled and tasted black licorice in the worst coffee, nullifying the previous version, because this was the worst coffee.
There is a taut rope tugging and warring between me and this black flavor. I like to think I’m a superhero and that I can conquer anything. A little veni, vidi, vici in one swift bang. So it bothers me that this flavor could hold me down like some malicious Jupiter, causing my body to pucker and punch at just a sniff.
When I was in high school, my best friend and I regularly went driving on the backroads. We each bought gargantuan fountain sodas and a bag of candy. Usually jelly beans for me. I was careful not to eat the black ones, but because it was dark I occasionally overlooked one. Purple is close to black in the dark. I tossed many a black jelly bean, some partially chewed, out the window. Finally, it occurred to me that I hadn’t even tried to like them. Periodically for the next several years I tried to eat the black jelly bean. Every time: full-body shudder.
When I was in college: ouzo. I had decided to go for a run for the second time in six years. About half a mile in I thought I might collapse with a sharp pain in my side. By the time I got home I could barely stand upright. The boyfriend I was living with had bought some ouzo and rented Philosophy in the Bedroom, based on Marquis de Sade’s writing. Holding the bottle he said, It’s Greek. You’ll like it. I was a classics major and had just begun learning ancient Greek. He pressed play.
Then he opened the bottle and a cloud of full-body shudder came out. I did my damnedest, sipping it though I still felt beaten by the run. I wanted to conquer and drink like a Greek. Romantics, ideals. However, the scent made the whole room throb (which persisted for the next few days, after which I forbade ouzo to ever enter the apartment again). My body a lost-sea boat, I fell into hallucinatory fever. Turned out I had a kidney infection and was subsequently very ill for the next week—all twined up in a Marquis de Sade attempt to get exercise and master anise. Black memory path.
The flavor still beats me. Anise and I have an ongoing air hockey tournament where I continue to allow the final disc in the door instead of bolting upright like a Hercules. I don’t expect to enjoy the black jelly bean, the ouzo, the secret anise, but I’d like not to fall to its sword every time. I know. I'm mixing metaphors in the dark.
People ask me why the self-torture. Someone suggested that the body naturally rejects things that will not be good for it. This makes sense. Were I to enjoy a basket of black jelly beans with a bottle of ouzo possibly my insides would turn to tar and death. My body indeed has warned me and I do not listen. It must be absolute masochism, some purely human drive. It’s why I’m not a god or superhero.
I think I have written about part of this before. Lunacy sets in. Forgive me.
Find out more about potential black death by foul spice:
Licorice International
Organic black licorice
A short outline and history from the encyclopedia of spices
Botanical, folk-lore and herbal information
FDA advisory on star anise teas
Altoids Curiosity Shoppe
Take thine enemy's name and conquer!
Best regards,
Anise Tachibana
Northern Front Licorice Pirate
8 Comments:
Licorice? EEchhh is all I have to say. The most incomprehensible flavor of mints in my opinion is the orange mint. EEccchh again.
i like your lunacy. it zigs where it zags and i go and read all over again. nobody could accuse you of being mediocre.
I detested black licorice until five or six years ago, when I started to actually *crave* it. Good n' Plentys, bridge mix, and now, more recently, the aforesaid Altoids. Maybe it's hormonal. Maybe it's mystical. I don't know if there is any other food that's gone from shudder to swoon on my taste bud scale. The thing is: I'll eat black jellybeans, but I don't LOVE them. The shape, and not the flavor, irks me. If they were people, they'd be pasty, small-minded, and lazy.
I like your blog very muchly, by the way.
Mr. Doom, I do not lose. It isn't that I hate anise. In fact, I'm trying to love it. I'm working a mind-over-matter operation here.
Hi kim. I think lemon mint is weird. Probably because it reminds me of cough drops my grandma gave me when I was little, after they'd been in her stale-smoke smelling purse for a spell.
Well, thanks transience. I shall persist loonily. I'm loving these shifting Bjork pictures.
Hi Kristen--and thanks. Immediately upon reading your comment, I thought, "Yes, that has happened to me with foods I originally hated." As immediately my mind blanked and I can't remember what they are. I think you're right about what sort of people black jelly beans would be (or did you mean all jelly beans?). I think the black beans would indeed be lazy and gloss so thickly over it that they would delude themselves into thinking they weren't lazy, which would then trickle into thick displacement issues they couldn't see out of. Hm. A whole new perspective.
I love Chinese licoriced snacks and occasionally hanker for the black rubbery stuff too. But never, NEVER, good 'n plentys. In college, when friends and I would rock vending machines to get them to drop free snacks, the first shake would result in the machines spitting out packs and packs of Good 'n Plenty. Even they could not stand them.
I think you told me about the Good 'n' Plentys once. That's funny. I'd like to know more about what goes on with your taste buds when you're enjoying the black licorice. I will get to the bottom of this!
Sometimes one just needs to punish one's tastebuds. It's kind of like those Flagellates maybe. The religious guys not the paramecia.
I'm sorry to have started repeating stories already. I guess until new ones intrude into my life I'm gonna have to keep recycling.
I agree totally with your first sentence--contrast is healthy. No need for apology. Besides, I liked the story both times.
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