Bust a cap(saicin)
I had an uber-geek moment today. I'd eaten some veeeery spicy hot sauce, and wondered why it was that drinking milk never helped me soothe the burning sensation of spicy food -- at least during "Phase I."
We must never speak of "Phase II."
Ever.
Anyway, it's widely believed that milk does help, but it's never worked for me. So, I started wondering why. I had three thoughts, in rapid succession.
The first:
"I wonder if capsaicin is lipid-soluble."
The second:
"If it is, that would explain why milk never helps me, since I only buy non-fat milk."
The third:
"God, I am such a nerd."
Well, after further cementing my geek status by doing some research on the Internet, it turns out that I was right, on all three counts. Seriously, a search of my name on Dictionary.com gave me this definition:
n. Nerd.
See Blackwolf the DragonMaster.Â
Capsaicin is itself an oil, which makes it fat- and alcohol-soluble, but not water-soluble. Which is why milk (with fat) helps, or ice cream, or whatever. I guess theoretically, the best cure for eating something super-spicy would be sucking on a stick of butter.
Luckily for me, I also buy soy milk.
Mmmm.... bean fat.
(FDA warning: olestra, derived from soybean oil, causes anal leakage in all but the most waterproofed of rectal sphincters)
The phrase "anal leakage" makes me laugh. Is that so wrong?
As for the "veeeery spicy hot sauce" I ate that caused me to think the thoughts that tipped me over the edge into a long, dark future of snorting while I laugh, losing my retainers, and staying up late polishing my collector's edition Internet, Animation, and Technology Enthusiast Pocket Protectors, I thought it'd be a good idea to experiment with a hot sauce I make.
Now, I usually hate explaining my jokes, but:
"Wow, is that the new I-ATE-PP? That's wicked awesome!"
Snort, snort.
So, this sauce is usually made with Serrano chilis, which have a Scoville rating -- according to a wide variety of conflicting sources -- ranging from 5,000 to 22,000 Scoville heat units. I realize this is a useless statistic, so I'll just say they average around 14,000 Scovilles. Compare that with Jalapenos, which supposedly average around 3,500.
Today, just for kicks, and since I had a bunch of old ones in my fridge, I thought I'd try making it with Thai chilis. I had a mixed bag of green and red ones, and I've been cooking with them, so I know they're hot as all get-out.
For a numerical comparison, one source puts Thai chilis at a Scoville range of between 50,000 and 80,000 Scovilles. So that's an average of about 65,000, which puts them in the category of foods that cause, as it is known in the scientific community, "screaming, face-melting diarrhea."
Only to those untrained in the arts of culinary pain management, that is. I eat them on a fairly regular basis, and my face hasn't melted yet.
What I failed to realize, of course, was that when I cook with these things, I use one or two in a big pot of homemade ramen, or a whole dinners' worth of stir fry. Concentrated together in a sauce, they're quite a lot hotter than my palate is used to.
Ouch.
Still... it was damn good. I just might have to change my recipe.
Hut…. hut…
This past weekend, I had the good fortune to go on a spur-of-the-moment hike in Poway, just north of San Diego. Partly to help recondition my long-injured ankle, partly because it was a gorgeous day, but mostly because it was something to do that involved fresh air, while simultaneously failing to include any kind of computer interface whatsoever.
There is something about hiking, for me, that seems to lift the ceiling of the world. It is an unreasonably dramatic endorsement, perhaps. This is, after all, an activity that is essentially the end result of the astonishing realization that walking can be done on unpaved surfaces.
Surprisingly, I found that while I generally hike alone, what I remembered most about this hike were the people I saw along the way. This wasn't a terribly difficult hike, and the area was well populated with a refreshing variety of would-be trailblazers.
There were dogs wearing little knit sweaters, and humans carrying bags of warm, fresh shit. I couldn't help but wonder which was more embarrassed.
An 8-year-old boy led me halfway up the mountain. He would linger until I had almost caught him up, then hurl himself up the slope, crazed arms and legs flying about him like runaway moons. His father, glazed and gasping, reached us at the summit and promptly collapsed in a dignified heap on the nearest flat surface.
I loitered at the summit for a while, and was well rewarded. The clouds parted for a while, and the sun shone down on a vista of much of San Diego county. The cross on Palomar mountain was the second most recognizable feature, after the Pacific ocean. A few lakes, all of North county, and much of San Diego proper could be seen. I am probably spoiled by the trip I took to Yosemite last year, but I was kind of hoping for something more. Half of the view was dominated by tract housing, punctuated by ribbons of shining freeway. The other half was rolling hills with desert scrub, well recovered but still bearing the scars from the wildfires a few years ago.
My trip down the mountain was highlighted by the sight of two separate families making their way in the opposite direction.
The first brought back memories of my youth; it was a middle-aged couple with a pre-teen son. The couple made their way in that absently familiar way of people who have long since exhausted all interesting topics of conversation. In amiable silence, they kept pace with each other in a steady, unwavering way which I assumed characterizes much of their life together.
The son, meanwhile, slouched along several yards back. Sullen and scowling, he trailed a stick along the ground behind him, as if it could somehow anchor his parents to the spot, forcing them to turn back. I remember many forced marches with my parents when I was growing up, but living in a desert, none of them involved a mountain hike. Ah, well... better him than me.
The second had me laughing all the way back to my car. It was a woman, probably in her mid-30s, with a young boy. Her son was just at the age where they begin to cast off the childishness of running around in aimless circles, and begin to expend their boundless energy in determined straight lines, cheerfully disregarding any and all obstacles. This one acted as though he were tied by a bungee cord to his mother, dashing ahead in sudden bursts of speed, then bounding back breathlessly to chivvy his mother up the mountain, like a working dog with a particularly reluctant sheep.
Red-faced and panting, she stopped to ask me how far it was to the summit, and groaned aloud at my answer. She took a couple of hitching breaths and pushed on after her son, who had long since disappeared in a swirl of dust. As I rounded the next bend, I could hear her calling after her son, trying to tempt him back to the car with promises of a specially prepared dinner.
From the despair in her voice, I figured her son wasn't having any of it.
All that, and I got to eat trail mix by the handful. Life doesn't get much better.
Housekeeping
Now that I have voluntarily saddled myself with a place of my own, I am discovering all kinds of things about myself.
Being able to vent gases as loudly as I want, whenever I want, has a certain cathartic appeal; but in all honesty, if no-one is around to be impressed or repulsed, there isn't much point to it.
Cleaning also has a new twist to it. It's easier to do it, since I know for sure that if I don't, nobody else will. By the same token, when I do clean, I'm not scrubbing someone else's food from the stovetop, or wiping someone else's pubic trimmings from the rim of the toilet seat (there are aspects to my time in Sacramento that I would glady forget). So while my apartment still tends to adopt a certain atmosphere of disarray, I've been much better about it than I have in my last few apartments (sorry, John).
On the other end of the spectrum, paying bills has developed an entirely new and horrible significance. Now that I'm not splitting the rent and utilities two or three ways, I have realized that paying $50 every month for 80 channels of screeching bullshit is a luxury that I can afford to pass up.
Fin.