What goes hand in hand with unlimited U-pick basil? Bulk
purchasing of pine nuts! CSA member Tanya Rotenberg has offered to coordinate a
group purchase of pine nuts from Weavers Way to get a reduced price for
everyone.
You can order a half pound or a full pound, at the price of
$28.50/pound. You need to place your order with her by July 9th.
Her email is: Tanya@weaversway.coop.
She will bring them to the CSA for you to pick up. Thank you Tanya!
Below is an excerpt from an ABC News article about why
knowing the source of you pine nuts is important. The pine nuts that the co-op
purchases are NOT from China.
'Pine Mouth':
How Pine Nuts Can Ruin Tastebuds for Weeks
By COURTNEY HUTCHISON, ABC News Medical Unit
Jul. 7, 2010
It's a chef's worst nightmare: to wake up one morning to find that food
has lost its flavor -- that every morsel to cross your lips
tastes bitter, metallic, and inedible. This was the
fate of San Francisco-based chef and food critic Jenna VanGrowski, 30, who
suffered from a bizarre taste disturbance last month known as "pine
mouth."
Though she
didn't know it at the time, the bitter aftertaste that came with anything she ate was
due to a rare and seemingly random reaction to eating pine nuts. She snacked on some two days
before.
…
The cause?
It seemed the handful of pine nuts she snacked on days prior was the unlikely
culprit.
Fortunately,
she also discovered that the reaction is temporary; most cases go away on their
own in one to four weeks.
One of the
most interesting things about pine mouth is that it's a recent
phenomenon," says Dr. Marc-David Munk, an emergency physician at the
University of New Mexico who wrote about his own ordeal with pine mouth as a
case study in the Journal of Medical Toxicology last year.
"It has
really come onto the scene in the last two years," he says.
…
Since the
Food and Drug Administration began tracking this affliction in February of
2009, over 50 cases have been reported, says FDA spokesperson Ira Allen.
…
Cowart says
a fungus that grows on the pine nuts could also be behind the taste effects,
though it is unknown as of yet whether the nuts in question had anything on
them.
Another
hypothesis -- one that is becoming increasingly accepted -- is that certain
non-edible varieties of pine nuts are being passed off in the marketplace as
the edible variety, Munk says. Some researchers have implicated China in
exporting these non-edible pine nuts.
Source:
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/Wellness/pine-mouth-pine-nuts-leave-bitter-taste-lingers/story?id=11097222#.T-5SJfUWlFE
