Saturday night, I joined some friends to a Fundraiser organized by CelebrateLIFE. Co-founded by Drew Voght, CelebrateLIFE has for mission to inspire and empower people of their community through different classes, workshops and spiritual counseling. CelebrateLIFE also donates and actively participate in helping children around the world through a few organizations, like One world and Procasa Hogar De Niños. Andrew Gentile, who is an environmental scientist, hypnotherapist, and a board member on the CelebrateLIFE's board of directors, organized and hosted the event. This was the second event of this kind he has done and was inspired by reading about a similar party covered by the New York Times in May 2008.

For this fundraiser, CelebrateLIFE had organized a Miracle berry party!

For the ones who haven’t heard about it, it’s a berry coming from Africa and when you eat its flesh, for a limited time your taste buds will play a strange trick on you. All sour and very acidic flavors you eat will turn into sugar in your mouth.

Our host had lined up a table filled with lime wedges and many other citruses, as well as tomatoes, pure lime juice, vinegars, stout beers, cheese, hot sauce, condiments, and many other acidic food you can find in your pantry. No, this was not a bad joke, or a bad host trying to clean up his pantry but a surprise that still few days later hasn’t sinked into my brain.

I was told by my host to taste the food on the table. Which I did without real interest, when is the last time you had a sip of vinegar, or a spoon of mustard?? But it’s part of the game, I grabbed a slice of lemon, my palate being very sensitive to acidity, I bit into it, locked my jaws and closed my eyes it’s so sour, it’s almost a torture. I didn’t even tried the lime, I know it would have made me cry. I try a sip of the pure unsweetened cranberry juice and again I make a face that scared the people around me!

Then, our host dropped a berry in my hand and tell me to slowly eat the flesh of the berry by moving it around in my mouth. There is a small seed in the middle that cannot be ingested, so as soon as I have cleaned the seed with my tongue, I spit it out. The berry itself doesn’t have much taste, I would not say that it’s pleasant or unpleasant, I thought it tasted like something a bit woody.

Then I was invited by our host to try again all the food on the table and here was the shock!

I first put a tomato in my mouth and it taste like if you had put a spoon of sugar in your mouth as your eating a tomato. I grab a slice of lemon and bite in it, it’s like eating very sweet lemonade, fresh cranberries, cranberry juice, in seconds I am devouring this strange buffet as it was a full display of sweets. Before I know it, I am advising people to try the Basalmic vinegar cocktail, with Basalmic vinegar and sparkling water, or mixes of pure cranberry juice with pure lemon juice. Grapefruits taste like candies. I look at the faces around me that use to pucker to the taste of the ingredients on the table, now everyone is like me, sipping on the hot sauce like syrup with a kick.

Of course at the same time, my mind is going, what else can I be eating with this!!! But before I start eating fresh cranberries like sweet cherries, my taste buds start coming back to normal and the last bite I took from a lemon gave me such jolt, I knew I didn’t have it anymore.

This was a fun experience that I will renew just for the weirdness of it. I already have a menu in my mind I want to put together to taste after having a Miracle Berry.

Note: Please prepare your Pepto bismol and your Rollaids, because even if it taste so sweet, you are still consuming very acidic food and like me you’ll feel the hot sauce and the lemon wedges later!!!