Carpe Diem #910 Bitterness/Sour

Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

I hope you did like our Tokubetsudesu episode and our first CD-Special. I have read wonderful responses on both episodes and it is promising for the rest of this month. I think the quality of the poetry shared here at CDHK becomes better and better ...
Today we are going further with sharpening our senses in collaboration with Hamish Managua Gunn who created our prompt-list.

Introduction

Today we are looking to bitterness/sour and I must say, both are my favorite tastes. I love the bitterness of (for example) radish and the sour of lemon. As I look at my grandkids, for example, they don't like bitterness, but their favorite candy is what we call here in The Netherlands, zure matten, (in English sour mats. It's a kind of candy with first the sweetness of Sugar, but as this thin layer of Sugar has melted, the sourness of the candy is very strong. I Always must laugh as I see their little faces change when they are tasting the sourness, but they love it.

after sweetness
the sourness of children's candy
their sour faces

© Chèvrefeuille

Credits: Sour Mats (Zure Matten), a sour kind of candy

Hamish on Bitterness/Sour

Without taste, of any kind, we forgo the pleasure of life. Taste means the joy of life, even the bitter taste of sour cabbage or a very dry wine or an English bitter beer. However, bitterness is a sign of toxicity, and the term is used often in daily language, such as ''a bitter pill to swallow,'' or '' sour grapes.''

Descriptions of taste are very often associated with strong emotions. As mentioned in a previous post on Sweetness, the strong link connecting taste with emotion and drive has to do with our evolution: Taste was a sense that aided us in testing the food we were consuming. It was therefore a matter of survival. A bitter or sour taste was an indication of poisonous inedible plants or of rotting protein-rich food. The sweet and salty tastes, on the other hand, are often a sign of food rich in nutrients. Yet the sour lemon is one of the world's most ubiquitous tastes and smells.

Savory dishes can sometimes be sour. Or they can be of the fifth basic taste, an addition to the four better known tastes of sweet, sour, bitter and salty, which is umami, a Japanese word used for “savory.”

Your haiku today should bring alive one of your favorite tastes, or a memory of a strong taste.

My response

Taste ... we all (mostly) have good taste, but in my work as an oncologynurse I see a lot of patients who have lost their taste through the chemo they are given. Must be an awfull idea to loose your taste. I cannot imagine how it would be if I would loose my taste. I like to taste new vegetables, new fruits and so on ... just to find the deeper source of it and the place where it is coming from ...

Hamish asks us to write a haiku which brings alive one of our favorite tastes and that brought me the following haiku:

the taste of cherries
helping me through the cold winter
Sakura blooms again

© Chèvrefeuille

 

Credits: covered in chocolate

And here is another one. A little bit naughty I think, but it fits the theme for today's episode:

my sweet love
covered in chocolate
arouses my senses

© Chèvrefeuille

Well ... I hope you did like this episode. I am looking forward to all of your beautiful responses on this nice post.

This episode is open for your submissions tonight at 7.00 PM (CET) and will remain open until February 6th at noon (CET). I will (try to) publish our new episode, Equilibrium/Balance, later on.