So, Wednesday night we busted out the miracle berry tablets and kicked off our New Year’s festivities by eating a ridiculous amounts of citrus fruits and salad dressing and eventually drinking our faces off.

Behold, the lone video of our initial foray into the mysterious world of miracle berries:

(I apologize for the shitty quality of the video. My video camera is a piece of crap and editing video is apparently not in my repertoire of skills.) I only took a little bit of video during the first few minutes of miracle berry madness because it’s hard to video tape other people while indulging yourself and I was giddy to try everything. So I set the video camera down and we all dug in.

Behold our bounty:

From left to right, front bit: Frozen grapefruit juice and margarita mix, cream cheese (none of which we actually tried), goat cheese, bowl of limes, oranges and apples.

Middle: Sour gummi bears, lemons and grapefruit (pink & red), watermelon, kiwi and pineapple, miracle berry tablets, super sour gumballs.

Back: Guinness Extra Stout, malt vinegar, plain yogurt, salad dressing, all dressed chips, sea salt & malt vinegar chips, dill pickle chips, salt & vinegar chips, ketchup chips, limonade, Keen’s mustard, tangy dill pickles.

Not pictured: Large jar of antacids.

To be totally honest, I didn’t end up being as into the miracle berry experience as I thought I’d be. To me, the lemons and limes still tasted sour, but with an aftertaste of intense sweetness that I didn’t particularly like. To me it was like the difference bewteen aspartame and sugar, it just wasn’t quite right. I’m also an absolute sugar junkie though, drinking my own weight in Coke and candy daily since teenagerhood, so maybe my sweetness receptors are off.

Ronny on the other hand, is diabetic, and things tasted ultra-sweet to him, so maybe because he’s not as seasoned to sweet things as I am. Blake and Alex seemed to like the effects well enough, as evidenced by the following pictures of them eating limes and lemons.

(Alex eating a lime.)

(Alex showing off her mad lime skillz.)

(Blake eating a lemon.)

(He likes it! Blakey likes it!)

Salad dressing did not taste so good, even with the effects of the miracle berries:

In my research online, people said that vinegar tasted like Coke - and they lied. It could be because I bought malt vinegar instead of balsamic, but we all agreed that vinegar still tasted like vinegar.

(Blake after taking a shot of malt vinegar.)

(Pixel Cat wonders WTF we’re doing.)

All in all, it was an interesting experience. Here’s a run-down of everything we tried and how it tasted:

- Lemons tasted like sugary lemonade.
- Limes tasted like lime candy.
- Watermelon tasted like watermelon (which I figured it would, I just got some to help us cut the acid in our stomach from all the citrus fruits).
- Sour pineapple was amazing, probably my favourite.
- Under ripe kiwis were probably my second favourite, they tasted like the most perfect, ripe kiwis I’d ever had. To Blake they were too sweet.
- Salad dressing and vinegar were both *thumbs down*.
- Grapefruit was great!
- To me the chips all tasted like chips, but the others found the sea salt & malt vinegar ones to be sweet and the sour cream & onion ones to have no flavour.
- The goat cheese tasted like nasty old goat cheese to me, but Ronny thought it tasted like creamed sugar.
- The super sour gumballs just tasted like super sweet gumballs.
- The Guinness Extra Stout tasted like absolute ass to me and not “chocolatey” as promised, but Ronny seemed to like it.
- The oranges were super sweet, like the best orange you ever tasted.
- The granny smith apples weren’t tart at all, they tasted like the apples in apple pie.

- The dill pickles apparently tasted like sweet pickles, but I despise dill pickles and even under the influence of miracle berries, I wasn’t trying them.
- If I recall correctly, the Keen’s mustard - a hot mustard - still tasted like mustard. (Blake tried that one.)
- Gin & tonic tasted sweet!

We promised the kids that they could try the miracle berries the next day, after the adults tried them and deemed them 100% safe, so they kicked off 2009 trying all of this stuff too.

Here’s Madison waiting patiently for us to get set up:

Wes and Madison waiting for their tablets to dissolve (no one liked the taste of the tablets):

Alex & Blake decided to give it another go too, so here’s the two of them eating a lime and grapefruit:

Trying V8 juice, I forget what they said it tasted like:

Madison trying a lemon:

Madison gnoshing on a lime:

Madison trying grapefruit, which she normally wouldn’t do because she doesn’t like it:

Ketchup chips are Madison’s favourite:

They tasted sweet!

Blake busting out the onions:

Onions were ungood:

Wes tries a lemon:

It’s still sour! (I don’t think he got the berry *all over* his tongue like you’re supposed to.):

But he kept eating it anyway!

Despite the face, Wes really liked the grapefruit:

Wes tries a lime:

Still sour!!!

Wes thought the kiwis were the bomb and ate most of what was left himself:

Ultimately Wes decided to hell with these crappy fruits and settled for the sour cream & onion chips for the rest of the party:

So all in all, it was an interesting experience for all of us and a good time was had by all. The miracle berries, to me, weren’t as miraculous as advertised, but they were still pretty neat and given the chance, I think everyone should try them at least once.

As an aside, I ended up taking over 60 pictures of our experience, but due to wanting to save bandwidth I didn’t post them all here. If you’re interested in seeing the rest, the gallery can be seen by clicking here.

And that was our miracle berry party. Happy New Year!

Like a lot of people, I read an article in the New York Times in May about the “Miracle Fruit” and how people were having “flavour tripping parties” with food tasting under the influence of these berries as the main event. That was all it took, I became obsessed with the idea, read everything I could about them and earlier this month when I was ordering things for my husband for Christmas on ThinkGeek and saw tablets of the berries were available for a mere $14.99 US, I was sold and bought a pack for our New Year’s Eve festivities.

The pack contains 10 tablets, made of freeze-dried berries and each tablet, according to ThinkGeek, is two doses, although other sources say to use the whole tablet.

When people have asked me what I’m doing for New Year’s and I reply with “We’re having a Miracle Berry party!”, they immediately ask me what that entails, so I thought I’d do a post on it, followed up with a post on the actual event.

The Miracle Fruit is a berry from West Africa where, when chewed and swished around the mouth for a minute, it makes bitter or sour foods eaten immediately afterward taste sweet. The fruit contains an active glycoprotein molecule called “miraculin” which, from my research, binds to the sweetness receptors on the tongue and actually changes their shape so they become responsive to acids, making bitter, acid-based foods taste sweeter. For example, after eating a Miracle Berry, a lemon will taste as sweet as lemonade and you can eat it in the same way you’d eat an orange.

The effect can last from 30 minutes to 2 hours and from what I’ve been able to ascertain, the longevity of the effect is largely dependent on the foods eaten while under the influence of the berry. Acid-based foods, such as citrus fruit, make the effect last the longest, whereas fat-based foods, such as bitter cheeses, make the effect wear off sooner because the fats break down the berry’s residue in the mouth.

Here’s a video of a food blogger explaining how the berry works and instructing her guests on how to use it before a Miracle Fruit party. Note that they’re using the actual berries, which are hard to come by and expensive due to the need for overnight shipping (the berries lose their effectiveness 5 days after picking them from the tree):

Sounds pretty cool huh? So why haven’t you heard about these “Miracle Berries” before? Well, that’s because they have a somewhat shady past.

In the 1960’s, a man named Robert Harvey, who was a biomedical postgraduate student, encountered the berry and the the 1970’s he had found a way to extract the miraculin from the berries to create an artificial sweetener with zero calories, specifically to benefit those with diabetes.

According to this article from the BBC, here’s what happened:

“Harvey’s sweet dream of making the world healthier came to an abrupt end. On the eve of the launch in 1974, the US Food and Drugs Administration unexpectedly turned against the product.

Legal advice and contact with the FDA had led Harvey to believe that the extract from the berry would be allowed under the classification “generally recognised as safe”. Having been eaten before meals for centuries in west Africa, without anecdotal reports of problems, it could be assumed not to be harmful.

But the FDA decided it would be considered as an additive which required several years more testing. In the poor economic climate of 1974, this could not be funded and the company folded.”

Read the whole article for the rest of the story, it’s interesting stuff. Basically the (conspiracy) theory is that “big sugar” had a problem with the whole operation and they were in bed with the FDA, but no one knows for sure if that’s true or not.

So while the berries are legal, miraculin extract is not. Also, to be clear, the berries are NOT drugs. The only thing they affect is your tongue and the only side effect to them is the possibility of heartburn, a stomach ache or a sore tongue from eating a dozen lemons in one night.

If you search YouTube for “miracle berry” or “miracle fruit”, you can find all kinds of videos of people trying the berries and then eating all kinds of strange things from raw limes, to capers, to malt vinegar.

Here’s a video from the original New York Times party:

Here’s one where author, Adam Leith Gollner (The Fruit Hunters) talks about the fruit and gets the host of the show to try a lemon while under the influence:

And finally, here’s a clip from the british show “Richard & Judy”, where the hosts and guests of the show try the fruit and then sample various foods while under the influence.

I don’t know why, but I absolutely love watching the reactions of people when they bite into that first lemon and I can’t wait to try it myself. It’s taking all the willpower I have not to sample the Miracle Berry tablets I have in the desk.

Miracle Berry Party

So how does one throw a Miracle Berry Party? Well, the first step is to obtain the berries or their freeze-dried counterparts. As I mentioned in the beginning, the tablets are readily available at ThinkGeek fairly cheaply, but the actual berries are a lot harder to come by as the plants are finicky and only grow in hot, humid places such as Florida or their native west Africa. If you Google, there are growers who will overnight ship the berries directly to you, but there are waiting lists and some charge up to $5 per berry, along with a $45 handling fee on top of actual shipping costs. Also, from my research I’ve learned that the tablets contain about 3 berries each and the effects work better and last longer, so that’s probably the way to go.

Food is, of course, the most important element besides the berries themselves and from what I’ve read, it’s best not to be stingy about it as people WILL want to eat a lemon or two all to themselves. Here’s what we’re having at our party (although other suggestions of acid-based foods are welcome!) and there will be 4 adults and 2 children:

- 12 lemons
- 12 limes
- 3 grapefruits
- Under-ripe strawberries (easy to find in winter in Canada!)
- Sour green grapes
- Granny Smith apples
- Sour Patch Kids
- Salt & Vinegar chips
- Dill Pickle chips
- “Stout” Guinness beer (apparently under the influence of miracle berries, it tastes “chocolatey”)

Friends are possibly bringing bitter cheeses, although I’ll be personally avoiding those as to maximize the longevity of the fruit’s effects, and I’m sure we’ll come up with more foods once we’re actually in the grocery store and looking around at stuff. I wonder what coleslaw will taste like?

Anyway, if you’re interested in the Miracle Fruit/Miracle Berry, do some Googling and YouTube searches and take a look, I bet you’ll be wanting to do it too. :o)

Coming January 2nd or 3rd: (Hopefully) Pictures and video from our little miracle berry party!

Other Stuff I Found But Didn’t Know Where To Put:

- Miracle Berry Cafe where all they serve is tart desserts under 100 calories, all served with a side of miracle fruit
- Blog post with video of people having a miracle berry party
- Toronto Star article

Burger King exploits indigenous people for taste test experiment and calls it a “film”.

I hate that I’m contributing to the viral nature of something Burger King is praying will go viral, but I wanted others to see this and maybe have a conversation about it.

I wish I could repost the thoughts of the person who brought it to my attention, and I’d link you, but it was a friends only post on Live Journal. Essentially his point was that Burger King was exploiting these people and that they were douche-nozzles for introducing fast food into their otherwise natural diets which, for the most part, have remained unchanged for a long effing time. Basically, Burger King was a bunch of assholes for giving these people the inevitable shits that even we, who are used to this kind of food, are prone to get after ingesting it.

Imagine the consequence of a Whopper AND a Big Mac on the delicate digestive systems of these people? That’s just evil!

And let’s be clear here. What I linked above is NOT a film, it’s an advertisement. Burger King is counting on people to talk about this, good or bad, in the hopes it going viral and ultimately selling more product. Burger King looooves viral internet advertising. Maybe you’ll recall their Subservient Chicken of 2004. This is just another attempt and it’s probably going to work.

On one hand, the concept IS pretty interesting, but at the same time, I can’t help but feel that these people were being totally exploited, both by introducing fast food crap that we all know is bad for us into their culture and for using them in a sneaky form of advertising that they’d never see, probably wouldn’t understand if it was explained to them and was likely misleading in nature.

This wasn’t an exploration in anything, this was a stunt. If it were a true exploration in the form of documentary, as I’m pretty sure they want everyone to believe, we would have heard more from those “no preference” people, who I’m thinking probably thought both burgers were equally repulsive.

Also, you and I as North American consumers of fast food (well, most of you) know the gastro-intestinal repercussions of eating such foods and our systems are USED TO IT. Did Burger King explain to these people that within 24 hours of eating both the Big Mac and the Whopper they were almost guaranteed to have explosive shits the likes of which they’d probably never experienced before? Don’t you think it would be cruel to not forewarn them? I’m very curious to see if this taste testing came with a disclaimer.

I would love to see someone do a REAL documentary debunking this “Whopper Virgins” bullshit. I’d like to hear what those people really had to say, not just the ones that were selected for the ad (I refuse to call it a “film” anymore) and not just the clips we heard. I’d love for a documentary crew to interview them the next day or the day after and ask how they FELT after digestion and if the people thought it was good food or bad food to add to their diet and what they thought of the unfortunate fact that fast food makes up a significant portion of the North American diet. I bet a real investigation would be very different than what Burger King has presented in their ad.

Anyway, the whole thing just left a bad taste in my mouth. I don’t like it. I think it’s bullshit.  What say you?

While looking for pictures of poutine to answer that question, I found this video from the CBC archives, which is hilarious.

BONUS: haha Check out “Wild About Fiddleheads” and “Canadians Love Kraft Dinner” on that same page.

This was all brought upon because I learned the other day that there is such a thing in the US of A as a “Canadian themed” restaurant called Bugaboo Creek that’s not really Canadian themed at all except for the decor and the apparent capture of some of our indigenous talking meese.

(Originally posted @ Live Journal.)

…but the thing is, I don’t have the time nor ambition to make another site right now, so this is what I’ve got. Not the prettiest page in the universe, but whatever. I’m waiting for Ditsy to figure out WordPress so she can teach me haha

I was going to make this a video blog, but it’s midnight and I should be going to bed soon. Plus, I’m not feeling very photogenic these days as my hair’s a funny length and looks extra stupid right now. I look not unlike Grover, as in the muppet.

Anyway, what’s new in Sunnyland?

Well, my real life friends Alex & Krissy seem to have been bitten by the YouTube bug and have started doing their own video blogs. Here’s Krissy’s first attempt, which is entitled “WoW Rant”:

Right now I’m on this medication which has a lovely side effect of increasing one’s appetite, so I’ve been eating like a cow and I’ve actually gained a few pounds as a result. Since I’ve been doing so much snacking, I decided to make meringue cookies this weekend, two batches, which didn’t last very long in this house. They’re really easy to make and I don’t think they have any fat and they’re sort of like…cookies made out of fluff, they rule. Anyway, here’s the recipe:

Meringue Cookies
4 large egg whites
1/4 tsp Cream of Tartar
1 tsp vanilla
3/4 cup of sugar

Beat egg whites and cream of tartar with an electric mixer at high speed until soft peaks form (3-5 mins). Gradually add in vanilla and sugar while beating. Drop by spoonful onto aluminum foil lined cookie sheets, bake at 225 F for 50-60 minutes. Makes 2 dozen.

Seriously, they’re amazing.

Other than that, I’ve just been focusing on staying sane until the snow melts. I’ve posted my last post in CammityJane for a while, so if you haven’t gotten caught up, now’s a good time. I’ve still got some things to work out in my head before I start working on that again.

Anyway, hope all is well with you folks. :)

Here’s what I’m doing instead:

- Cleaning my kitchen.
- Making meatballs for tomorrow’s dinner.
- Listening to the Beastie Boys (and various other crap I refuse to admit to).
- Making a grocery list.
- Looking at recipes on KraftCanada.com because dudes, I am so not a gourmet.

The cat (Digit) is sitting on the kitchen table and meowing for no apparent reason. Well, I’m sure there’s some reason, but I’m not even sure he’s speaking to me, so I’m basically ignoring him and hoping he’s not brave stupid enough to go for the onions I’ve got on the stove. It’s hard to say, but I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt.

I’d take pics because my kitchen’s actually somewhat clean (haha) but I can’t upload them so what’s the point? >:o( Yep, still grrr there.

I’m so weird when it comes to food and this is what Jesse and I have in common, except he probably has an eating disorder (worrisome) and I don’t (reassuring!), we decided today. We also decided that Jesse is so special, that we should have Jesse Day with a parade and everything. I don’t think I’d be a very good cameraperson for that event, all the footage would be blurry from laughing so fucking hard if it’s half as funny as it is in my head. :D Sumpin to ponder though. *strokes chin*

We like to make up our own holidays around here. :)

Does anyone see why I couldn’t make these in advance and freeze them? And if I did that, how much longer would I have to bake them from frozen? Hrm.

FYI? Meatballs are much more labour intensive than I thought they’d be. (But then again I’m probably making twice as many as we’ll actually eat for dinner.)

Cooking in the middle of the night isn’t a weird thing for me. I don’t do it all the time, but it’s something I’ve always done and when I do cook, my brain seems to think that 10 people live in this house, it’s ridiculous. Sometimes it’s meals in advance or parts of meals, sometimes it’s stuff for lunches, sometimes it’s muffins or brownies. Usually it revolves around whatever happens to be in the house at the time.

When I was little I indisputably had the best great grama in the whole wide world. I mean, she was textbook fairytale old lady, white hair, short, GIGANTIC boobs, wore floral mumus (I shit thee not, but it worked for her with the boobs & all), walked with a cane, was old as the dirt in her garden, she crocheted, she cooked, she was awesome & probably the best friend I’d ever had in my whole entire life until I met Blake.

She’s also probably the reason my sleep schedule is, and has always been, as fucked up as it is because I was with her a lot and we’d cook in the middle of the night or draw pictures or she’d tell me stories or I’d sit in the bath and she’d read me stories. I dunno if she was the nightowl or if I was or we both were, but this is what we did so certain sleep/wake habits make a lotta sense to me.

It’s 4:44am as I type this, my meatballs are finished, they’re with the sauce in the fridge and the rest of the dishes can wait until tomorrow. I should go to bed. My body knows it, my mind knows it - it’s just a fact. I should have been in bed a long time ago…but as I turned out the kitchen lights, I noticed that one of the windows has frosted in a sort-of fleur de lis pattern that may just be worth the wait for this morning’s sunrise because the sun will come directly through that window at one point, I just have to wait for it.

It’s stuff like that that I live for, as lame as it sounds; cool looking shit that nature just gives us, I mean those moments are gifts from the universe as far as I’m concerned. I like to memorize them.

I’ve been thinking about my dad a lot lately. My biological dad, Phil. I really only have one, he’s it, he porked my mom and out came me, it’s crazy but I accept it. He’s a kooky guy and I kinda like him, but I think he’ll just be Phil for the rest of my life because I don’t think he’ll ever really be my dad. He’s just this guy I know that I’m really interested in, probably because it’s ingrained in my DNA to be as such. (I’m a little obsessed with nature vs. nurture.) Phil’s just Phil, Lisa (his wife) is just Lisa and Raili (my almost 2 year old sister) is just Raili. There’s no textbook or Wikipedia entry that can tell me how we’re all supposed to fit together.

Ever since I met Phil & Lisa, when I was 13, I’ve been trying to figure out what Phil and I had in common, because that’s what you do when you meet one of your parents for the first time and it’s taken me years to even make a list of 10 because some of the things he does (and they do) are pretty bizarre. They just live in a whole different world than I do. But now that Raili’s in the picture, it just all kinda makes sense. It’s like, she was the missing piece to put the whole picture into perspective for me (and maybe for him too, although I doubt he’d say so).

I know I’ve posted this picture of her before, but dammit, it’s a good picture. :)

I’m probably thinking about Phil & Raili because Phil’s birthday is Feb. 11th and Raili’s is at the end of Feb. (I suck, I’d have to look it up) and mine’s the 1st of March, so there’s part of me that thinks we should all get together at some point in the next couple of months while our energies are compatible, but I’m not big on birthdays so we need a different reason.

Something I grew up doing was making maple syrup with my Aunt Betty & Uncle Bill, I wonder if they’d be interested in doing that in March? They live in the bush, I’m sure we could find some maple trees and collect enough sap in the span of a few days to have at least one good pancake breakfast/lunch/dinner with enough syrup to maybe even take home. Something else to ponder.

Hmmmm sugar bush dreams sound pretty good, I think I’ll ponder that in my sleep & wait for the next frosty window.