Flavor Tripping Party (and a Discount!)

I know what you’re probably thinking based on the title of this entry.

Flavor tripping? Is Meghan blogging about drugs in addition to food?

Not quite. Kind of, but not quite. On Friday, the roommate and I hosted a flavor tripping party sponsored by mberry**. Not familiar with flavor tripping? I learned about it last year in class, but had never tried it.

Basically, miracle fruit temporarily alters the tastebuds to make bitter and sour flavors taste sweet. It’s, well, pretty sah-weet. This New York Times article covers the concept better than I could, but imagine sucking on a lemon and tasting lemonade. It’s wild.

Charles Lee, the founder of mberry, sent us miracle fruit in the form of tablets, which are less perishable and last longer than the original berry form.

First, we tried all the foods plain. The table’s spread was pretty unusual–lots of acidic foods like lemons, limes, grapefruit, tomatoes and vinegar. An acid reflux sufferer’s worst nightmare, basically. We also had goat cheese, chilis, strawberries and salt & vinegar chips.

After we reminded our tastebuds of what the foods taste like in their normal state, we let the tablets dissolve on our tongue and cover our palate, waited a minute, and then, SHA-ZAM!

The tablets worked differently on each person. We all agreed that citrus fruits tasted especially strange since they didn’t elicit any puckered faces.

Everyone’s favorite combination of flavors was suggested by Charles–graham cracker, goat cheese and strawberries. (I also added semisweet chocolate chips.) This combo tasted exactly like strawberry cheesecake, since strawberries’ sweetness was exacerbated and even the goat cheese tasted sweet.

We demolished an entire roll of goat cheese in under 15 minutes, if that’s any indication of how delicious our healthier strawberry cheesecake tasted. I could definitely see these tablets aiding people on low-sugar diets or people who have Type II Diabetes.

We also had a fun little competition to see who could come up with a unique and delicious flavor combination. The winner received an mberry t-shirt. Katie squeezed lemon on goat cheese and graham cracker to make lemon pie and earned herself the prize. Yum.

Now, here’s the fun part: Charles is offering my readers a buy one, get one free discount on mberry tablets. Just put two packages of tablets into your shopping cart and enter the code “pricharm” at checkout. There are 10 tablets in each package, and the tablets can be split in half to share the flavor tripping love.

The mberry store link is here: http://muse.mberry.us/products/ Stock up quickly, as this code expires at 11:59 p.m. tomorrow (Monday).

I think these packages would make great stocking stuffers, or you could even host your own flavor tripping party.

Thanks to Eliza Kern for being my official photographer for the night. I’ll post more of her pictures tomorrow. She documented my day on Friday for a photojournalism class. It was like having my own paparazzi.

**Disclaimer: mberry provided the tablets free of charge, but opinions are my own. Not that I’m capable of suppressing my opinions, in any case.