I'm too busy letting my tastebuds recover...

The other day, Barb was invited to a friend's birthday at work, where they often compete in who can eat the hottest sauces. She was teasingly challenged to eat a ---haverneros? Javerneros? I'm not sure how it's spelled---(looking it up)---ah! Habaneros! ----the light orange Mexican pepper that makes a jalepeno seem mild.

She did it, in one gulp. Without blinking too much.

We're used to hot salsas, hot Chinese and thai food. They were startled that she could do that...but it didn't mean she didn't feel it. She did.

Sp she was invited---in between admiring noises about her bravery---to take a few home. She ate another one at home, but dared me to do the same that night.

So I did. There's still the small kid in me that can't resist a dare...

Of course, I made sure I ate it just before I had two bowls of Barb's hot chili, so the other would mix in my stomach and spare me the worst of the Montezuma's revenge I was anticipating...

The chili seemed curiously---flat, although Barb made it as spicy as ever, after eating--- that.

Comparison is all.

And if something is supposed to be spicy, if it doesn't kill a few thousand taste buds while doing it, it hasn't really done it's job....

I'm not sure if it's the influx of Spanish-speaking people into the USA, but things that were spicy in my childhood seem curiously flat and bland...there has been a gradual "salsalization" of my generation.

Barb told me that hot peppers can be used to produce endomorphins, that it's one way to "wean" thrillseekers who get an endomorphin rush when they risk their lives. When you bite directly into them, your body releases endomorphins to protect you from pain. So...it can be a way to get your endomorphins without risking your life...

I suppose. I never got addicted to risking my life. Evil Knievel I'm not. I just like a little...spice...in my eating.

We used to be satisfied with steak and potatoes. Now I pour hot sauce into Barb's already-hot chili.

One thinks of the inhabitants of the Middle Ages, to whom spices were as precious as gold. We use salt and pepper so casually...but people used to be killed for shipments of the same.

Tastes change. Not just fashions....tastes. Literally.

I probably never even tasted salsa, except occasionally at Mexican restaurants, until the seventies, where it became a popular side item....

Will we continue this way? Now cajun blackened food is offered at every restaurant, and chips and salsa is an appetizer at most restaurants. Will our food get hotter and hotter....?

As the baby boomers age, and their sense of taste slowly dies....(your taste buds die little by little from the moment you're born. If you think things tasted sharper and more pungent as a child---you're right. And there is a reason older people like sweet desserts so much....)

....Will the rapid spicing of our foods continue and accelerate?

It will if I have anything to say about it.

Of course, I also note an increase in ads for acid reflux disease...

As again, the Baby Boomers get older...

Do you think the two are tied together?

Of course, but hey, some things are worth the price....

It'll probably develop that hot sauces cause cancer. That's true of everything else that makes life worth living....

But hey...

I still can't resist a dare.

One wonders what my great-grandchildren will eat....

As tastes change.