>From: Uncle_Dirty_Dave <xrated@ameritech.net> >-- and a smirking chef peeking from the kitchen. Yes, the familiar smirking chef, I've seen a few of them, too. I like to bring in my own heat and dumbfound the wait staff. Their reactions vary from "You brought your own? How neat!" to a kind of disgust like I'm bringing used motor oil to their table. It doesn't help when the people with me say "Oh, he puts pepper on everything" in the same tone of voice they'd use for "He still makes mud pies, too." Once in a while you meet up with people who assume that putting heat into food ruins the food. If it's a sarcastic chef who was told to make your dish hotter, it gets pepper dumped on it like it's animal food. I made the mistake once of giving the waitress a film cannister of hab powder and asking to have the chef put "some" of it on my fish. (Jeff S. was with me on that trip.) The cannister came back half-empty and the fish was red. Thanks. Sometimes I stump the house when I ask for heat; they actually have no sauce, no powder, maybe just black pepper or the little pizza-shop packets of red flakes if I'm lucky. Why We Carry Heat ... I have a bottle of CaJohn's HDH in the Escort's glove box right now. - A _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp