[CH] Regional food/Seedlings/Tabasco challenge

Virginia H. Dimond (dimondcn@enteract.com)
Sun, 27 Feb 2000 15:01:34 -0600 

Hi all--

I'm being lazy and posting on three topics at once.

First, the discussion on bell peppers and sausage sandwiches made me hungry
for a nice Italian beef sandwich.  This is a Chicago specialty -- I was
shocked when I found out you can't get them outside the major metropolitan
area.  Another reason to pity those who aren't lucky enough to live near the
Windy City.

Anyway, if any of you are in the area, be sure to try one.  Lean beef is
cooked in a spicy broth, sliced paperthin, and further cooked in an au jus,
heavy on the garlic, black pepper, and herbs.  Then it's piled on a french
roll, and served.  (Funny, I was brought up with these and always thought of
the sandwich as being very mild.  But my husband & I took a man from France
out for an Italian beef lunch, and he said it was so spicy-hot he could
barely eat it.)

You can get them with or without cooked bell peppers, and "hot peppers" --
with, of course!  Usually the hot peppers are really a gardiniere of chilis
and other vegetables in an oil base.  I often add my own hot peppers to my
sandwich.

If you have a large appetite, you can try a combo -- an Italian Beef with a
big link of Italian Sausage added.  Every beef stand in the greater Chicago
area has sausage sandwiches and hotdogs, too, plus other dishes.


Secondly, does anyone have a good source for seedlings in the Chicago area
or online?  I'm too lazy/disorganized to do the seed thing.  I've had fine
luck with jalapenos, "salsa" peppers (not sure what they really are, sold as
Salsa Peppers) and habs, but I have trouble finding habs at the local garden
centers.  Twice I've tried Cayennes, but they had very little heat, so I
would like a good source for them.  (I suspect it wasn't growing conditions,
since friends who live a few miles away said that the cayennes they grew
were much hotter than their jalapenos.)


Thirdly, I've been very interested in the discussion on heat tolerance.  I'd
always blamed the variation in my own tolerance on what time of the month it
was, but since it seems men on the list experience it, too, that theory is
shot down.

Several years ago, Cecil Adams in his The Straight Dope column, published a
letter from a guy who had accepted a bet to drink an entire bottle of
Tabasco -- I assume the standard, 2 oz. size.  He wrote to inquire whether
he'd do any harm to himself.  Cecil told him he'd probably end up with a
mile chemical burn down his esophagus.

The thing is, I'm pretty sure that when I'm at the most heat-tolerant phase
of my tolerance cycle, I could drink a bottle of Tabasco without too much
trouble.  From the way some of you talk, I imagine you could drink a bottle
even when you're not especially heat-tolerant.

Ginny