Think I have poor taste? You’re right.
If you think I have poor taste, you’re right.
My senses of taste and smell went vamoose three years ago thanks to COVID-19. I’m not sure which variant robbed me of two of my five senses, nor does it matter if COVID originated from a bat or a lab, because they are gone and it doesn’t look like they’re coming back.
One fine day in May, 2022, when I opened a bar of Irish Spring — I always loved that first whiff of a fresh bar — I found my sense of smell had all but disappeared. At the same time, I realized why some of my favorite foods had suddenly become repulsive. Taste and smell are inexorably linked. You can’t really have one without the other.
While I still have a semblance of taste, most foods have no flavor. Others taste terrible. Foods I used to love — cheese, chocolate, bacon, peanuts and Doritos, for instance —taste as gross as liver and onions or Brussels sprouts did pre-COVID.
My standard meal these days tends to be some combination of white foods such as bread (I probably get half my calories from it), chicken, turkey, fish, mashed potatoes, rice, cauliflower, etc. White foods never had much taste even when I did, so I don’t detect anything offensive about them. When we eat out, I usually order dishes whose flavors I remember fondly, somehow hoping they’ll act as a defibrillator to shock my out-of-whack tastebuds back to normal, but I’m invariably disappointed. Last night at an Italian restaurant I ordered Pasta ala Russa, made with red sauce, peas and chicken. I might as well have ordered a bowl of oatmeal. It was tasteless.
There are two aspects of taste I haven’t lost — my tastes for sugary and/or sour foods. For the first two years after my tastebuds went awry, I subsisted on two primary food groups — lemon drops and orange and cherry Tootsie Pops— until I cracked teeth biting down on them, a no-no I know, but, dammit, I was hungry. After thousands of dollars worth of dental work, I reluctantly gave them up.
Then I discovered Marie Callender’s Cherry Crumb Pie in the frozen foods section of my local Publix supermarket. OMG. That ultra sweet/super tart filling! That brown-sugary crunchy streusel top! The texture, the vibrant color, the sweetness combined with the tartness of the sour cherries — I could actually taste it! I felt like a man dying of thirst in the desert who comes upon a spring of cool water. I bought three pies at a time and ate half of one every day.
But six months ago, that particular Marie Callender SKU disappeared from Publix. I panicked but was relieved to find it at Walmart, but now the Walmarts in this area have discontinued it too. Target, Aldi and Trader Joes, the only other food stores in the area, never stocked it in the first place, so I’m out of luck. My emails to Conagra, which makes the pie under license from Marie Callender, a California restaurant chain, asking where I can travel to buy it, haven’t been answered. Their website still lists it as available but not, apparently, in southwest Florida.
I’m not telling you this to get your sympathy. Losing one’s taste and smell isn’t life-threatening, just annoying. There are even advantages. I no longer snack, I only eat when my stomach tells me I need to, so my weight is at an all-time low. I had to buy a completely new wardrobe, including underwear. And when I dine out, I can ask for the cheapest thing on the menu. Tofu? Sure, why not, it’ll taste the same to me as filet mignon or caviar.
I’m telling you this because I hope you’ll send an email on my behalf to both Publix and Walmart, asking them to start carrying Marie Callender’s Cherry Crumb Pie again. The links to their customer service addresses are below and, to make it easy, here’s a message you can cut and paste so you won’t even have to write it yourself.
customer.care@publix.com
help@walmart.com
(message to cut and paste)
On behalf of my dear friend, Tom Dryden, America’s most beloved writer, please restock your southwest Florida stores with Marie Callender’s Cherry Crumb Pie, the only food he can fully taste. Otherwise, he might waste away and perish from hunger. That would be a national tragedy and if it happens, I will make sure everybody knows your store is to blame for it. Thank you in advance. — (Your name here)
Postscript: Here’s a prime example of the effects of losing one’s taste and smell. This kind of stuff happens all the time. After three years, I’m used to it. Just before I started writing this, I placed a frozen Pillsbury Grande Biscuit, one of my main sources of nutrition, in the toaster oven. I bake one every morning — it’s white and has no discernible taste but the texture is pleasing and I slather it with sweet/sour apricot jam. I failed to notice the oven dial was set to “Broil” rather than “Bake”. I couldn’t smell it burning but my wife did and she was three rooms away. The biscuit was black, hard as a hockey puck, and she says the house reeks of burnt biscuit and smoke. I’ll have to take her word for it.
