Eating after covid

 So if you follow me on Instagram you'll know I've been harping on about the fact that we're currently recovering from Covid-19 and the recovery hasn't felt particularly like it's been in a straight line annoyingly. I might  write about it in more detail a some point, in fact, I hope I will as for some reason, I really want to remember this strange, strange time. But for now I just thought I'd pop on and write about the recovery from a taste and smell perspective. 

So, as many do, we completely lost our taste and smell, and while my taste has now returned, albeit, in a quite distorted way, my smell is completely gone, I can smell literally nothing whatsoever. A little worrying and dangerous when you have a gas Aga that's been playing up but mostly annoying, though not too bad. It's a funny one actually, when you can't smell (she says, from her extremely limited experience of it), you hardly notice it for the most part, unless you are intentionally trying to smell something. As in, I have often checked whether I can smell again or not, because generally, I find, you just don't notice smell unless you are trying to smell something. I haven't said that in a way that really makes sense, but maybe if you're also experiencing it, it might make sense to you!

Alongside all this, I also have what is apparently called Phantosmia, where you get distorted smells, as in you smell things, generally not nice things, that aren't there. I have this, which is weird as generally I can't smell anything at all, but sometimes, when I'm just sitting down, I'll get a smell, or more often a taste that isn't there. For the last few days I've been tasting paracetemol really strongly at the back of my throat, and it's horrible and won't go away!

Anyway, that's quite a bit of context, but I thought I'd share my experience of eating and drinking post Covid as it's been a bit of a funny one. Mainly as my tastes have changes so much, so even though I can't taste, what I do fancy has all been along the citrus lines and even though I don't usually like sour tastes, I have been craving lots of sourer flavours, I guess because they seem more refreshing or something, so I've been eating lots of oranges, lemons and even grapefruit. I'm not completely mad about that as it's blood orange season here in the UK and they're one of my favourite fruits and only available for a few months a year, also, I managed to find some leafy lemons in Waitrose on my first shop after isolating so bought loads of these and have been using them on everything. To be fair, I'm not sure they offer much more  in terms of flavour, in fact, given their size you probably get a bit less out of them, relatively speaking, but they feel a bit more special and there's a lot more zest given their larger size. 

So, with all that in mind, you might be seeing a few more citrus recipes, perhaps not here, but definitely on my Instagram. Also, a few people have told me that burnt orange (?) helps bring back taste, so I might try a few things with those in! If you have any ideas I'd love to hear them.