Tag: food humor

Hot Lips Nachos

On December 1, 2011

I had nachos for dinner tonight and got way too liberal with the hot sauce and jalapeno peppers. Law have mercy! My lips were burning like someone was lighting them with a blow torch. And yet I could not stop eating. The flames barely had half a second to recede before I put some more fire in my mouth.

I suffered through a rather large plate of nachos, and it never got any easier. Each bite was as hot as the last, and just as painful, and yet it was not a deterrent for me to cease stuffing myself.

The weird thing is that it burned like hot tar on the equator on my lips and into my mouth, but once it headed to my throat, it didn’t burn anymore. All the way down the chute to my stomach, I didn’t feel a thing.

This makes sense, when you think about it. Your lips and mouth are like two Buckingham Palace guards – they’re not going to let anything in that would do you any harm. If those guys can take the red-hot fire of spicy food, then they must figure that your cast iron stomach should do just fine.

I’ve popped things in my mouth and discovered that they were too freaking hot – like they’ve come out of an oven in Hades. When that happens I don’t spit it out, I simply make a big “O” with my mouth and say, “Hot! Hot! Hot!” and fan it a few times with my hand. And then I swallow the blistering lump so it quits burning – once it gets past a point, I can’t feel it anymore.

This is a wonder of biological engineering – a miracle of the human body.

On the other hand, some things go in your mouth all nice and easy-like, for instance the beans I had for lunch today, and then later they raise a ruckus in your digestive system like Tasmanian devils wrestling in the eye of a hurricane.

But I am not going to let this deteriorate into a discussion about flaming bottoms and lighting matches to see if they can ignite a blow torch when a person passes gas, and so forth.

Why can I NOT seem to get past bathroom humor?

When I went with my writer’s group to a retreat a few weeks ago, one of the members gave us each and “award.” Mine was for Humor. The one line summary she’d written about me on the award was, “Wait, wait – I have to go to the bathroom.” That pretty much sums me up – I don’t want to miss anything, hence the “wait, wait,” but the bathroom is always close by – either in my writing, in my talking, or when I’m rushing for it because of some extremely spicy food I had no business eating.

Okay, speaking of the toilet I have to tell a story, but it will need to wait until tomorrow because it’s too long for tonight when the bed is calling and my eyelids are as heavy as a full bladder. See, I just can’t get away from bodily functions……

Subway Heat

By Suzanne Olsen

On September 15, 2010

In Food

My daughter and I got Subway sandwiches tonight. Both of us ordered every vegetable, including those blazing jalapeño peppers.

I love those things, but as soon as I eat one I start coughing violently. The peppers burn my throat so much I can’t even stop coughing long enough to drink cold water.

“Mom, you always do this,” my daughter said with disgust. “You always eat that hot stuff and gag for ten minutes.”

“But I love it so,” I said a few minutes later when I could gasp out an answer.

I ordered the entire assortment of vegetables, oil and vinegar, salt and pepper, mustard, cheese – everything you could think of, and all I could taste were those jalapeños.

“I don’t know why I get all this stuff, all I can taste is the jalapeños,” I said. “And they’re burning my mouth so much it hurts.”

“Why do you do it?” she asked with the interest of a teenager bored with her mother’s foolish habits but trained to be polite.

“I love them,” I said, like some junkie justifying my habit.

The bad thing about getting ALL the vegetables is that there is no physical way they can fit between two buns. The guy finishes loading the sandwich and flips the top bun over and it just sticks straight up in the air – it makes an “L” shape. He has to bear down with both hands – hard – to get the top to go halfway over the sandwich. Then he wraps it really quickly and stuffs it into a plastic sleeve to further insure its stability.

At home, when I try to open the wrap, lettuce springs out like confetti from one of those little pop bottle things you aim at people on New Year’s Eve. Chunks of green pepper and onions cascade to my lap in a veggie waterfall. The liquid ooze of all that vinegar and oil and mustard and smushed tomatoes drips out the bottom. If I don’t put a plate under there, and I usually don’t because I’m sitting in front of the TV, my lap looks like somebody tossed a salad on it.

Another thing. Subway needs to quit carrying those salt and vinegar potato chips. Those things are too good. While the guy was making my sandwiches, I grabbed a bag and scarfed down all 230 calories before he was done. Jared would be so ashamed of me. Man oh man are those things addictive. My mouth was puckered from the salt and acid from the vinegar, but it was worth it.

I believe I had better hit the hay early because I’m probably going to have the WORST nightmares after consuming all of those things so late at night. My my my, the little culinary delights in life make the days bright and the nights a fright, but that’s all right. Ahhh, goodnight.

Drink Life Up Without Regrets

By Suzanne Olsen

On June 18, 2010

In Food

We had some Chinese food last night and ended up with leftovers. One box was this really good green bean stuff with little chunks of garlic that is out of this world. I scooped out all the green beans and put them on a plate to pop in the microwave with the other stuff. I got ready to toss the box in the garbage and noticed there was some juice in the bottom full of those little chunks of garlic.

I was starving and it looked so good, I started to tilt the box up and drink it like you would out of a milk carton. You know the Chinese take out boxes I’m talking about? They have those little fold tops. I needed to fold them completely down or that fabulous liquid would start toward my wide-open mouth and run out between the slits and I’d lose some of it.

I moved the top lids down so that my mouth could be very close to the box but it still didn’t make contact. I knew there was a risk that some of the liquid would miss my mouth. Should I pour it into a cup. Nope. I tilted that box up faster that lightning strikes, and all that liquid ran out between the slits and headed right down the front of my top. Not only did it go inside the low cut top, it went between the cleavage, out the bottom of my bra that doesn’t make total contact in that one and only spot – women know what I’m talking about – and ran down my stomach nearly to my belly button.

I must say I had no idea liquid could flow that fast. From a purely scientific standpoint, it was quite remarkable. And what are the odds that the liquid would find it’s way right down that cleavage? A little to the left or right and the damage would have been contained.

As it was, I was drenched all the way down the front of me by what appeared to be no more that a teaspoon or two of benign fluid at the bottom of a small cardboard box.

There are forces in nature we do not understand, but they plot and scheme to work against us so that, ultimately, we don’t get the impression that we are intelligent beings in control of our own lives. These forces cause us to get tripped up on feet so used to walking that some people can do it in their sleep. They make it so we can’t remember the debit card pin that we’ve been using daily for ten years when there is a line behind us as long as the equator. They make food leap off a fork as it travels to our mouth and land in the lap of a silk dress that is Dry Clean Only. The list is infinite, and I’m not the only person who has been dealt the cruel hand of fate. How many times have you heard people say, “I don’t know what’s wrong with this key, it always worked before?” or “Of all the luck…”

The heartbreaking thing about tonight’s Chinese food incident is that (a), I didn’t get to enjoy that glorious nectar, and (2) I knew it was going to happen. I was getting the vibe big time that it was going to spill on me, but I decided to gamble. I thought if I tried, I’d have a 50-50 chance that it wouldn’t spill, or worst case, it would spill but only a little. I knew I was taking a chance, and I could have poured the stuff in a cup. Why didn’t I? Because I thought that would be a stupid waste of a clean cup, and it would take a few seconds more and I wasn’t willing to wait.

What have we learned from this?

First, we’ve learned that I’m an idiot.

Second, we’ve learned that if something can go wrong it will, so only an idiot would gamble on getting a lucky break, even just this once.

Third, we’ve learned that we can console ourselves with a Costco cookie and some chocolate pudding, which, combined, turned out to be a nice consolation for the missed green bean juice.

And finally, we’ve learned that being cautious is probably a good way to go, but it’s not nearly as interesting, and living your life in fear of Chinese juice in your cleavage is just living a half life. I say, don’t be afraid to go for it all. Better to have tipped the box and gotten soaked than drink out of a cup like some little know-it-all sissy girl who wants to act superior all the time. That’s just not me, and I’m not ashamed to admit it. Now excuse me while I go take a shower.