A Pine in the Mouth

 That's not a typo.  A pine in the mouth.  As in pine mouth syndrome.  Never heard of it?  Neither had we until we were struck with this bizarre temporary (thank goodness) condition.  All because I had to get fancy when I made Sunday dinner. 

I try to make a nice family meal every Sunday.  It is usually the only home cooked meal 'The Hubs' gets all week (don't feel bad for him, he eats plenty of steak and lobster at business dinners) and sometimes the only time we sit down as a family to eat.  So, a few weeks ago, I decided to make a nice Italian pasta dish and I decided to make pesto...with pine nuts.  It was delicious.  'The Boy' didn't think so.  He didn't even try it.  Thank goodness.

Two days later, I started to have a foul, smokey, bitter taste in my every time I ate.  I thought I had an abscess and ran to the dentist.  I was all prepared for hours of intense drilling but...not the case.  I had pine mouth.  I called 'The Hubs' and asked if everything tasted awful to him and he said, yes but he thought what he ate was bad.

I did a ton of research and found out that pine mouth is a new phenomenon in the last two years.  It's caused by eating Chinese pine nuts that may or may not be from an inedible species of pine trees. What?  Why can you by inedible food at Super Target?!!!! 

To make a long story short, our mouths tasted like a chimney every time we ate for a week.  The only way we could mask the taste was to cover our food with hot sauce.  We ate a lot of Mexican food that week.  Including delicious taco pizza.  Thanks, Jessica, for the recipe.  It was so yummy and so easy to make. The littles loved helping.

A little how to...

1. Spread refried beans over pizza dough.  Top with ground turkey.  I seasoned mine with taco seasoning because we need things to get pretty hot.

2. Bake in the oven until it's done.  ( I'm so great with directions.)

3. Top with your favorite taco toppings.  Take a picture of the tiny foot next to said toppings.

4. Let oldest child get creative.  Give baby a bag of lettuce to play with.

5. Enjoy!

6. Cover in hot sauce if you have pine mouth.  Correct ratio is 2 parts hot sauce to 1 part pizza.

The pizza was yummy and didn't taste like chimney for even one second.  We'll try it again with less hot sauce now that we have fully recovered.  And we will never eat pine nuts again!