Virgin taste

I am no gourmet expert. I like my food simple.

Bite into a luscious, fresh strawberry and savor its sweet-sour taste. Enjoy the thread-like meat of chicken and appreciate its unique taste without the dressings and flavorings. Take pleasure in the cool sweetness of mango as it quenches a saccharine-parched throat. Relish the green bitter taste of boiled asparagus. Munch the crunchy tail of a fried Peter’s fish.

My limited vocabulary is not enough to describe even the most simple of tastes.

But not our taste buds. There are hundred of them to be found within the small round bumps on the surface of our tongue. As much as 5,000 taste buds. Each one, depending on their location, can identify the variety of tastes that pass through them. Distinguish the sweet from the vinegary soup. Spot the bitter from a sugar-filled chocolate dessert. Get the hint of the spice amongst the mélange of flavors.

Chefs have created sumptuous cuisines that could intoxicate our senses. The blend of flavors helps our taste to be so much more discriminatory. I read somewhere that our sense of taste reacts strongly to change and surprise. Thus, variety creates intensity.

And I love variety. Given the choice, I would not eat the same viand twice the same day. Same flavors can make our taste buds jaded and insensitive.

Yet, there are days that I want the simple fare. For I believe in the beauty of simplicity.