I don’t ever eat spicy food. It scares me. I hate it when I try something new, and ask the server if it’s spicy, and they say no. Then I put it in my mouth, and fuck, it’s Dante’s inferno. My husband is the opposite. He would put Tabasco on pretty much anything. Nothing is ever hot enough for him. I don’t want to eat anything that tastes hostile or aggressive, like it would jump off the plate and kick my ass if it could.
I was at a friends house, and she put out cheese and crackers. Now, come on, cheese always looks fairly benign, right? I bit into what appeared to be a perfectly normal cheddar… Only to discover that it was cheddar with horseradish. It tasted like cheddar with Napalm. It made me cry. I told her that it was mean cheese.
I don’t like food masquerading as other food. Who sneaks peppers into classic recipes for any reason? Why? Some hot foods are honest, at least. Anything that features Habanero Chiles is pretty much an edible blowtorch. And who in God’s name invented Wasabi? And why? They must have been harboring deep, unprocessed anger from childhood towards humanity. Seriously. I’ve seen ice cream with wasabi. Is nothing sacred?
I check the package ingredients pretty carefully, at this point. But if it’s unwrapped, and sitting on a plate at someone else’s house, all bets are off. It could have anything in there. Like horseradish. It could be mean cheese. You never know.