Another Day, Another Meal

It's just another day in my allergy filled life...

 A few days ago I had a friend in town and we decided to do dinner at this Italian place near my SoHo apartment.  It's amazing and I find myself wondering why I had not yet popped my head in the door to check it out.  The bread basket is placed on the table after we ordered.  There are two different kinds of bread, one is in a paper cone within the bucket and the other is placed around the cone.  The latter looks semi-suspicious.  Little greenish looking dots appear sporadically throughout the bread.  The friend dives right in; I on the other hand take the piece of bread to investigate it a bit closer.  "hmmm.... this could potentially be a pistachio. Or is it an olive? What do you think?"  I decide to just skip on the bread-- better safe than sorry.  A bit later our salumi board appetizer comes out.  It's a beautiful presentation and the first salumi I try is amazing.  I see one however that appears to have pistachios in it.  Okay, don't eat that one or any piece close to that one. Check.  I look up at my friend who has a heavenly expression on his face after eating the duck liver mousse, which is presented already spread on a piece of bread.  I can't miss out on this, so I bite right in to the remaining slice.  Chew, savor, swallow, think "damn".  I had jumped right in without even looking at the bread to see if the skeptical green dots were there. Of course there was one at the far end of the slice of bread.  So, the next step is to verify the green speck with the server.  Yup, definitely a pistachio.  I'm thinking that there are so few, maybe two mini-dots per slice, that I should be alright, perhaps a slight itchy throat at most.  I'm certain I did not actually eat one; it was a pretty small bite and I didn't feel any varying textures.  However, It's been a while since I have had any sort of contact with a pistachio, and I don't really know what to expect which makes me slightly nervous.  I play the waiting game and ended up with what I predicted: just an itchy throat and a numbish feeling tongue.  Not too bad for a potentially disastrous and night ruining situation.  But hey, that's the story of my life-- and this was just another meal.