[CH] Re: MidWest Hot Luck (K-Drag Warning)
Alex Silbajoris (asilbajo@hotmail.com)
Mon, 23 Jul 2001 13:26:11
>From: "Sandy Olson" <sandyo@willowtree.com>
>my moderate
>tongue was treated to several dishes created so that I would not die >in
>the process of enjoying them!
I've had mixed results when bringing a moderately or lightly hot dish to a
hotluck. Usually everyone is either enthusiastic about hammering some good
strong heat, or else they're a borderline or non ch-h still reeling from
whatever "Oh go ahead and try a bite" it was they just tasted at the next
table over. When they taste a lightly hot dish, the mild folks look at me
with a mix of bewilderment and appreciation, surprised and happy that I
didn't have a hot trap for them. The hammerheads look me in the eye and
tell me it isn't hot.
A dish that's only hot enough to make you realize it towards the end of the
serving simply falls off the mild end of the scale. I guess it's sort of a
sensory saturation effect, when there's so much to taste in quick sequence.
A wine taster can spit into the sawdust, but after tasting something really
hot, only time can really clear the palate so as to be neutral and ready for
the next tasting.
>I did, however, have an out of body experience
>when I spread some pepper jelly that Renee had brought back from Seattle
I prefer to think of it as a portal to another state, sort of an internal
sweat lodge. In some ways you are still in the room, maybe still chatting,
but part of you is definitely ... elsewhere.
Or to put it differently, if you're up on your Todd Rundgrenn:
Time stops - the light goes on
a thundering head and no body
washed up and woke up on the beach,
seaside breakfast, tender egg on white sand.
Legs long and tan without a break, even to the neck
suddenly, simultaneously, an eclipse and a snowfall
flakes melt instantly on the shoulders like wet silver
burning little holes all the way to the marrow
puckered flesh like avocado sags into a green pool.
All the birds leave raking turquoise ruts across the Velveeta sky.
It's time to scream.
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