I can’t say that I wasn’t warned. The neighbor who gave them to me said that they were the hottest chili peppers in the world. I’d heard that before, so I was a little skeptical. Still, she grew all sorts of peppers in her back yard so I at least knew it was hotter than anything in her stock.

Then, as I was tearing apart one of the peppers and putting it in my soup, I was warned again. This time by Clancy. Maybe you should put in a little at a time?

“How much damage can a single pepper do?”

Within the next twenty minutes, I’d had three large cups of diet coolaid.

Within the next thirty minutes, I was throwing out the last third of the soup that I had eaten. I have never in my life thrown out something for being too spicy.

Within thirty five minutes, I filled my mouth with ice for the fourth time just to try to keep the temperature in there down.

Within forty-five minutes, my nose hurt from breathing. Not because I got any chili seeds or whatever up there, just because of the exposure.

Within fifty minutes, it hit my stomach. I started scarfing down cheese and milk and drinking some stomach agents to try to mitigate the coming damage.

Within an hour, I must have scratched right above my eye because it burns like the holy fires of hell.

Within an hour and a half, I realized that the burning sensation on my lap had less to do with the fact that I had a laptop on it while writing this post than it had to do with the fact that the same hands that burned above my eyes helped aim the barrel to hit the figurative target at the bottom of the toilet bowl when I needed to unload that coolaid.

Shortly after that, I look up the pepper on the Internet. Find out that yes, in fact it is the most spicy pepper on the planet. And that Indians use it, ironically for a medicine. In between churns, my stomach is extremely skeptical of that assessment of its healing value and believes that Indians are crazy.

Somewhere in the back of my mind, a separate ghost that smokes in the back there as it conspires against me wonders what I’m going to do with that other pepper…

With some hesitation, I would like to announce that William Sherwood Truman, known around these parts as Trumwill, has gone hip-hop.

No, it still remains one of the musical genres that I have little or no use for.

Rather, I speak of the underwear that, when I’m not careful, peeks out above the pants that are resting too lowly.

No, I still think it’s utterly stupid that so many young men are wearing their pants so ridiculously low.

Rather, I don’t have a whole lot of choice because gravity is dragging them down.

In short, my pants don’t fit so well anymore. My belt, too, has become too large. Not ridiculously large, but enough so that they don’t hold my pants up for a couple hours unmonitored. And when they fall, they fall lower than they used to. And if I want to, I can now pull them straight off without unbuttoning or unzipping. Still a bit of a struggle.

So the good news is that I’ve gone down slightly in pant and belt size.

The bad news is that my pants don’t fit anymore.

And I’m too white to go hip-hop.

I broke down and got a brick of Velveeta a few weeks ago. I’ve been able to muster up more discipline since getting married since my usual “Bare Cupboard” diet doesn’t work as well whenever there’s someone else buying temptation. So I figured that I would be able to hold off and meter my eating somewhat.

Velveeta used to be something of a special treat for me. I wouldn’t get it all that often simply cause once I got it I could eat the entire brick in no time flat. Heck, I didn’t even need to melt the stuff. I could just cut it off and eat it. In too large of quantities. So I reserved it mostly for group occasions where I needed to make my special chili which contains all manner of cheese and faux-cheese. Despite this, though, I always had a soft spot in my heart for the stuff. How could anyone have a problem with Velveeta? It’s like cheese, but different. It lasts longer. It doesn’t need to be refrigerated. It melts wicked-fast. It is a scientifically superior cheese.

My wife, it seems, has changed me.

I can barely eat the stuff. I can’t eat it at all without it being melted. I don’t like it on crackers melted or otherwise. It’s only mildly edible when supplementing something else. Chili, actually, cause it makes ravioli taste funny. Thank goodness the scientists put so much effort into the stuff, cause it’s going to take a loooong time to work through that huge darn brick.

The same sort of thing happened before we left Estacado. I bought some Cheez Whiz on a lark and didn’t even finish it. We gave it to one of the homeless guys that used to help us out with chores around the house. He hasn’t been corrupted by my wife as I have.

A while back I mentioned in a comment on Phi’s blog that because of my wife I no longer have the same appreciation for American Cheese that I once did. There are certain brands that are worth trying (one of which, oddly enough, is Sam’s Club brand!), but by and large I eat other cheeses if I can. It’s hard to go back when you’ve had cheese that actually contains significant amounts of cheese.

I am kinda pissed at Clancy about this, actually. She took things that I used to like and made me not like them anymore. She’s mean.

All is not lost, though. She will take the Easy Cheeze from my cold, dead hands.

If you’re like me, you wonder about various things.

Things such as… “I wonder if Ramen goes bad”

Or “How long have we had this Ramen?”

Or “That little label thing that says 121805SB couldn’t possibly be referring to Sell By December 18, 2005, could it?”

If you’re like me and you wonder about these things, the following answers come up in the form of a day of burped-up pasta and other particles:

Yes.

Roughly three years.

It could indeed.

The subject of the debate: American Sriracha hot sauce + Reduced fat cheddar cheese + crackers

Arguing in favor would be my taste buds, the side of my tongue, and the makers of the half-gallon of kool-aid I’ve had to drink tonight.

Arguing against would be my stomach, the front tip of my tongue, and my exhausted toilet.

En route to Cascadia, we realized that we were going to have to stop in Cimarron to get some food and refill our gas tanks. Clancy wanted to go to Flingers, a chain restaurant, but the first couple towns we looked in didn’t have one. We were about 50 miles from the next large town, which we were pretty sure would have one, so we soldiered on until I realized that my gas gauge was hovering on the wrong side of Empty. Fortunately, a little strip of gas stations and whatnot presented itself and we pulled over.

So we refilled my gas tank and then discussed whether we wanted to stop again 50 miles down the road or just grab a bite to eat in that strip. The convenience store we were at sold pizza slices and whatnot. I saw that there was a truck stop diner next door and went over to investigate if they might have more selection. Their whiteboards mentioned various sorts of BBQ being the specials of the day, but the guy working there handed me a menu which was six pages long and had all sorts of things that Clancy might enjoy. So we decided to do that instead.

Unfortunately, in my little scouting adventure I neglected to notice that the restaurant allowed smoking and so the whole place smelled like smoke. We’ll call that Item #1.

The next thing that happened was that we ordered water to drink. She came out with two relatively small glasses. She said that she would get some more water in a pitcher for us. When it eventually came out, she only filled the pitcher 1/2 the way up. Item #2.

So we ordered. I ordered the enchiladas. Oh, wait, they didn’t have the ingredients for the Mexican food menu that day. Okay, then, I ordered chicken-fried steak… strike two. I was almost begged to ask what actually was available, but I figured that they would naturally have hamburgers. And they did!

“Would you like everything on the hamburger?”

“No tomatoes.”

“Oh, well we don’t have tomatoes anyway. What kind of fries would you like?”

{Look at menu, see options for regular or curly} “I’ll take curly”

“We don’t have any curly fries.”

“Okay, regular then.”

“We can put the seasoning on regular fries.”

I agreed and it was Clancy’s turn to order. She ordered the grilled chicken and lo and behold they had it.

“What side did you want with that?”

“Mashed potatoes.”

“We don’t have mashed potatoes.” {for brevity I will just skip to the part where she pretty much had to get the same seasoned straight-fries that I got. And she got a salad.} Item #3.

She was going out to the car to get something when her salad came. If you can call it a salad. It was half-brown and was about as appetizing as… well as something less appetizing than a salad. I was getting hungry, so I decided to munch on her crackers, which were six months past being too stale to eat. Clancy ate half a cracker and one bite of her salad and put it off to the side never to touch it again. Item #4.

Our main courses came out. Clancy’s grilled chicken was strongly reminiscent of Subway’s roasted chicken except not as fresh and flavorful. She dumped enough salt on it to get it down, though. Item #5.

My burger actually wasn’t that bad on the merits. It was kind of small, though I have to point out that the lettuce at least simulated freshness in ways that her salad did not. No brown, no anything. The meat and cheese were acceptable. The fries were actually kind of sort of tasty.

The problem was that by the time I got my food I had been in the place too long. You know how some restaurants allegedly spray an aroma to make you think you’re hungry? This place did the opposite. It was its own appetite suppressant. The overwhelming smell of cigarette smoke and fried. The flies that were everywhere. The half-brown salad that was still sitting on the edge of our table. The taste of stale crackers lingering in my mouth. I was starving when we got into the restaurant but by the time my burger came out eating was the last thing that I wanted to do. Item #6.

For dinner we got to eat at Flingers at the largish town of Colorado Falls. She ordered the exact same plate there that she had ordered (or tried to order) at the truck stop diner earlier in the day. Everything in the Flingers in Colorado Falls tasted exactly like the Flingers in Colosse, Mocum, and Almeida-Santomas. And it was beautiful.

Before Sunrise asks:

I was at GAP Kids the other day, buying an early birthday present for my 9 year-old niece. As I was browsing through the clothes, I noticed that there was a “plus-size” section. {…}

When I was growing up there was no such thing. Children who were overweight just bought clothes that were meant for older children. I can’t help but ask myself – does this sort of thing indirectly encourage children to stay fat?

I actually had a conversation tangentially related to this with a coworker recently. My wife and I have had such conversations on multiple occasions. All three of us refuse to buy more clothes or nicer clothes that fit because we are dissatisfied with our weights.

Our thinking goes along the same lines as B-Sun’s. If being heavy (or heavier than you would prefer) becomes too comfortable, it removes incentive to lose the weight. I know a lot of women that hold on to their thinner clothes simply as an incentive to lose weight. I think that there is something to all this, though maybe for women the promise that you’ll buy a fantabulous new warddrobe may be a better enticement.

In regards to childhood obesity, though, I’m less sure. Fat kids still face some pretty harsh consequences for their flab. It strikes me as very unlikely that that’s changed in the last decade or so. Unfortunately, since nothing can really top the social and health consequences inherent with obesity, I’m really not sure what else can be done.

I’m a sucker for Mexican food. Always have been. Whether it’s authentic Mexican or the chili-infused American variety, it’s hard to go wrong. The problem is that Mexican food usually comes with rice and beans. Ever since I was little I’ve never liked rice. It’s a texture thing. Mom the Short Order Cook used to make me Mac’n’Cheese or baked potatoes at rice meals. Rice only gave in to stuffing as the worst side dish that wasn’t green or orange.

So alas, my favorite kind of food is stuck with one of my least favorite side dishes. Worse, the side dish in particular is not always easy to keep segregated from everything else. So for years I’ve been ordering two helpings of refried beans rather than rice. The only problem with this substitution is that while I like refried beans I don’t usually want or need two helpings of it. Also, refried beans can be kind of bland and if you dump it in hot sauce like I do it can get soupy. Nonetheless, I’d usually order two helpings of refried beans and eat a little more than half of it.

One of the habits that Mexican restaurants in Estacado have is that on every plate they offer they stick shredded lettuce and diced tomatoes on the corner of the plate. Usually cheap lettuce at that. This lettuce has the tendency to get enmeshed into the plate and can honestly ruin it for me because it just doesn’t seem like it belongs.

Most restaurants are pretty good about making a single substitution, but once you’re asking for two or more it starts getting a little more dicey. Either you forget all the particulars or they do, but the rate at which your plate complies with your preferences falls from about 95% for one substitution to about 70% for two.

I’d tried mixing the rice and the refried beans before, but in the end the rice was just too much. What I didn’t figure but should have was that it wasn’t necessarily that the rice was too much, but that there was too much rice. A 1:1 relationship of helpings between rice and beans simply doesn’t work, but if you only take half the rice and make sure to save some of the cheese from the main entre, the three compliment each other extraordinarily well. The rice adds structure to the beans, making it a little more solid. The texture that I don’t like in rice counters the texturelessness of the beans wonderfully. The cheese and chili/verde sauce from holds it all together. Best yet, these three things together make something solid enough that you can pretty much add however much hot sauce that you want.

Last Saturday night I had so much hot sauce that my stomach was in agony all day Sunday. It came at a price, but it was nonetheless beautiful.

If you ever feel tempted to get a potato salad tub at Walmart, I would caution against it. It doesn’t taste very good.

Things that don’t taste good usually come in one of three categories. They’re either “bad but guilty pleasure yummy”, “bad but of course good for me” or “inappropriately sweet.”.

This is neither. This is just… bad. I don’t understand. I like potato salad sometimes. It has the right nutrient contents, which is to say that it’s unhealthy but not in an sugary way. It’s not a mishmash or two foods that don’t work together. It just doesn’t taste good.

I don’t understand.

A little while ago I mentioned that I have a very poor sense of smell. To which Barry asked:

Do you also have a diminished sense of taste, because those things seem to go hand in hand. Not to overuse a body-parts metaphor…

The truth is that I don’t know for sure, but I think I do. In all honesty, I didn’t realize that I had a poor sense of smell for the longest time. It’s difficult when you don’t have anything to compare it to.

I remember back in junior high when stink bombs were all the rage. Early on, I really didn’t know what they were. While everyone around me scattered in search for cleaner air, I would just stand there and sniff. I’d think to myself, “Hmmm, this smells like rotten eggs or something. Maybe rotten fruit. Definitely smells interesting. Very interesting.” I similarly don’t mind the smell of farts. I sort of have a vague, “This smells bad” feeling, but it’s more of an observation than a feeling. In some ways I like it just because it’s interesting and different.

But with smell, you are eventually notified that you are not smelling things that others are smelling. Clancy frequently asks if I can smell something and I say that I can’t. Something like that happens enough and you start to get the idea.

With taste, though, I don’t really have that. If I’m eating something, I can taste it. It may taste bland, but I know that I am eating something and therefore I think more inclined to be able to taste it. Sort of like I can sometimes smell things only after Clancy points them out to me.

At the same time, when it comes to food, I’m a big texture person. What something is made of is as important as how it tastes. I don’t like rice even though rice has little or no taste to it. I don’t like rice even if it’s mixed with something I do like that should theoretically engulf the non-taste of the rice. I just don’t like eating it. If I’m more fixated on texture than most people, that probably means that I don’t taste as much as they do.

The other thing is that I love, love, love spicy food and food that has any sort of really strong taste. I’ve commented before that the worse a food makes my breath, the more I probably like it. Garlic, onion, jalapeno, you name it. And the stronger the taste, the better. Whenever I eat Thai food I typically go for the spiciest stuff they’ve got or the next one down, which is usually higher than anyone else at the table that has eaten there is willing to go. Since I’m not a particularly tough person when it comes to discomfort, it’s likely that I am not as uncomfortable eating that stuff as the next person… which would bring me back to diminished tastebuds.