Hey VM, I'm seriously interested in what happened in your head back then. I'm trying to make sense of my own experience from last year's lockdown and this is the first time I read something that reminds me of it. Can I please ask you a few things before I share my own experience?
1. Was your experience gradual?
2. Did it have a clear culmination and then a stop, or did it pass away slowly?
3. Were there any recurrent themes to your thought, or did they feel random?
You can't even begin to imagine the waking heavens and hells that start unfold...
History is a huge part of it for sure! Take onion and garlic for example. They used to be the only umami ingredients you could grow throughout Europe and they've got plenty of sugar (compare apple's ~13g of carbs to onion at ~9 and garlic at ~30!). Since fruit was not available nearly as much as now, the alliums were one of the most nutritious foods you'd find. That's why it's SO prevalent in Western cuisine, but not nearly as much in others, especially when you look South.
The open-mindedness is another spot on, because your perception of flavour is afaik ... (read more)