Ethiopian Food & Pine Mouth

I haven't cooked for the last couple of days because I have discovered Ethiopian food. My book club read Cutting for Stone this month, which is set in Ethiopia, so we used that as an excuse to meet at Abyssinia, a local Ethiopian restaurant, on Tuesday night. (The website is pretty hilarious.) I'd never eaten Ethiopian food before, but I immediately knew it was right up my alley. They bring your food out on top of a thin, spongy bread called injera, and you use the injera to scoop up the food - no utensils! I took a picture but it's sort of crappy.

That's the vegetarian sampler. I couldn't stop thinking about it all the next day, so I made Ben go there with me last night, too. I thought afterward that maybe I'd had my fill for a while, but right now as I'm typing this out I'm sort of craving it again. It is DELICIOUS. Mom, I will make you go there the next time you're in town. For an adventure!

Here's another weird thing: A few weeks ago, I noticed that every time I ate or drank something, I had a weird metallic taste in the back of my mouth. I mentioned it to a friend who is a nurse, and she asked if I was maybe taking too much iron. I do take an iron supplement most days, so I stopped that and the taste went away after a couple of days. Then, a couple of weeks later, I randomly found out about pine mouth. Apparently, eating pine nuts causes that exact kind of thing in some people! 36 to 48 hours after eating pine nuts, a metallic taste shows up. I thought I might have eaten some pine nuts around that time but I couldn't remember for sure.

Then on Tuesday morning, I noticed it again. And what did I eat on Sunday night? Enchiladas with pine nut cream. MY MIND IS BLOWN. Ben hasn't noticed it at all, though, and he's eaten some too, but I'm still getting that taste in my mouth today. It's a real bummer. I guess I have to quit eating pine nuts.