Sadomasochistic snacking
The Saturday before Memorial Day, while Elizabeth worked, I drove to the farmer’s market on Bidwell. I haven’t been there since, as I’ve been busy for one reason or another, but I’ll probably go back again this week. I’ll bike, most likely, because going to a farmer’s market isn’t quite ‘pretentious faux socially conscious’ enough as it is.
My mom goes to the market regularly, so I recognized a lot of the products. Hell, half the things I bought were on her recommendation (though I didn’t go to ‘her’ meat person, a mistake I’ll rectify the next time I need a slab of beef). One of the people sells various salsas: I’ve had his ‘Texas caviar’ a few times and loved it. It’s various ingredients chopped up, like onions and corn and black beans, with little to no actual sauce. It tastes damn good on a tortilla chip.
He had samples of all his products, and as I tried the hot tomato based one (as opposed to the hot chopped one, containing habeneros which I’m sure Dave would love to watch me eat) I said that my wife would never like it. ‘Hey,’ he said, ‘that means there’s more for you.’ I couldn’t refute that logic (and we have a large container of Wegman’s salsa in the fridge), so I smiled and bought a tub of it before continuing on and buying some sausage and peameal bacon from a person a few booths down.
Here’s the thing: the salsa was wonderfully spicy when I had a small chip’s worth at the market. I quickly discovered that when eaten with any degree of concentration, even with only a square centimeter or so on an entire chip, there quickly develops the sensation that a distraught lover has set several large fires on your tongue. At this point I initially stopped eating, but after I realized that nothing I could do would make the pain go away, I accepted my fate and would keep eating.
My face turns red and I start to sweat a bit. My breathing gets heavier, my nose runs and I occasionally say, ‘hoo’ under my breath. It’s the most work I’ve ever put into eating (and I’ve been in a burrito eating contest). Yet almost every day I would open that damn container and subject myself to its torments. There was less than a session’s worth of it left tonight (I do eventually give out and stop, or switch to nacho cheese instead), so I sent it off while reading The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror (which, by the time I finish, will no longer refer to the current year). I’m free! No more pain, no more tongue flagellation.
I think I’ll try the chopped this week.