Sour Tooth

Over the summer, before my time in Berlin, I had been hosting a more-or-less weekly (maybe every other weekly?) vegetarian potluck throughout May, June, and July. One time, a friend of mine, at the end of the night, left behind two pints of Häagen-Daaz ® ice cream in my freezer and a bottle of white wine in my refrigerator. Now, I don't usually eat much ice cream (I, would-be vegan (don't worry, I still eat plenty of dairy and egg-containing things (e.g. pancakes) in social situations (okay, I wanted those pancakes, they were my idea, I'm not an aspiring vegan, not really)) that I am, stray mostly towards sorbet, especially in at-home situations), and pretty much never drink white wine. But, there they were, and at the time I was feeling pretty down; some preemptive seasonal affect in mid-summer, perhaps. And it seemed like my friend was telling me "Hey, Pete, it's okay, rent some Sex in the City, curl up on the futon, and drink this white wine, eat these pints of ice cream, and then you can cry yourself to sleep."

But since Jack let the cat bag out of it about my current hiatus from alcoholic distractions, I tell this story because my friend, over the weekend (we were in St. Augustine, at a third friend's family's beach house. They were drinking beer, I was rocking out an apfelschorle and eating some ginger snaps and lemon sorbet), he asked, "Hey Pete! Do you have a sweet tooth now that you stopped drinking?" To which indeed I had to admit, I do. Which we all agreed makes a lot of sense, since alcohol is essentially just sugar. But I'm really not thrilled at the thought of having a sogenannte "sweet tooth," nor at the implication that my beer elitism was really just me candy-storing.

To this point in my life, I have identified three teeth that I have:

1) Bitter tooth. This is the tooth which, historically, I have probably been proudest of. Favorite vegetables: broccoli, brussels sprouts, kale. Coffee taken: black. Number me amongst the almonds, yo.

2) Spicy tooth. Probably not as insanely immune to capsaicin as I was a few years ago, but I still do occasionally special-order hot sauce from Belize, and can eat most hot peppers with red-in-the-face-and-sweating-but-still-calm aplomb. A friend of mine in Berlin turned me on to a hot sauce made from that pepper from India that they're now weaponizing. Violent. Delicious.

3) Sour tooth. I am a huge fan of the Cape Gooseberry.

I just don't see how a sweet tooth can fit in with all of this, except for:

Bittersweet
Sweet & Sour
and lots of spicy things are sweet too.

So maybe I just don't want to be eating anything that's sweet for sweetness's sake? I mean, I swear by dark chocolate and crystallized ginger (bittersweet & sweet 'n' spicy, respectively). And a thing which I would like to actually stop consuming is refined sugar, since its processed with bone charcoal, so I guess I'll end up paying more attention to this.

But there it is, what we all knew, what a sweet guy I am.