a battle for the ages... in my mouth
Last night for dinner I made peanut noodles, a dish whose sauce included, this time, both chili oil and Mongolian fire oil, as well as a number of cloves of garlic. (I have referred to this sauce before, as an ice cream topping in that case.) As you might expect, the taste lingered long past dinner-time; in fact it was still very much present when the time came for me to brush my teeth before bed. Rather than simply chasing the garlic-pepper fumes from my mouth, however, the toothpaste reacted with them in a truly startling fashion, setting up a furious tingling over my entire tongue. It was startling, let me tell you.
Whatever chemical reaction was going on (Leah's got us some fancy baking-powder toothpaste, so there are all sorts of chemicals involved), the battle between mint and garlic-pepper was clearly won by the latter: when I woke up this morning, the taste of the sauce was again strongly present. No more strange sensations on brushing my teeth, however.