olbas oil

What a great time to start blogging about food. Terrible cold, no sense of smell or taste. Even Olbas oil, until last night, wasn't getting through.

As a result, everything (outside of breakfast) has had to have a different kind of flavour - something you can feel in your mouth, like chilli or bitterness. I've eaten a noodle broth with so much chilli that it made my eyes water and two types of curried soup (one homemade, recipe to follow) and one amazingly nice one from Waitrose (Keralan Chicken? Possibly.) Bitter chocolate is nice, in a different kind of way. It's weird, as when your sense of smell is fully intact, you almost completely lose this bizarre feeling on your tongue.

The other half is back tonight, and while my tastebuds are loving bitter flavours, I'm taking the opportunity to cook sprouts (with pancetta, honey and caraway - in theory this should work...) which he loves. Hopefully this will be the night that I finally learn to love them too. Or else, not being able to taste will be some sort of consolation. Talking of consolation: going to Sufi on Saturday. That is incentive enough to recover, if I ever needed one.