Feel the Burn

By Gordon Hopkins Like any truly civilized man, I like to eat. The length of my belt will attest to this. Food is one of the greatest of the sensual pleasures we as a species are lucky enough to enjoy. It is a testimony to the ingenuity of the human race that we have taken was is a very basic function, taking in nutrition to provide us with the energy needed to live, and turned it into an art form.That is why I have little patience for people who seem to be hell bent on ruining it. I would feel the same about someone who wanted to draw a mustache on the Mona Lisa or add fart noises to Purple Haze.A favorite dish of mine is jambalaya. I like Creole (red) jambalaya or Cajun (brown) jambalaya. Alas, not being versed in the culinary arts, I cannot make it myself. Earlier this week, I was recently gift some by a friend. Don’t get me wrong. It was good, very good. It was nearly perfect. Nearly. However, there was one problem. That problem became apparent after maybe two bites, when I became aware of the volcano erupting on my tongue. I was later informed the chef had added a special ingredient to the recipe: a ghost pepper. It turns out ghost peppers are aptly named. If you eat one, you may very well die. In 2007, the Guinness World Records certified the ghost pepper was the world's hottest chili pepper. It is rated hotter than the jalapeno, the habanero, and is 170 times hotter than Tabasco sauce.Why does such a thing even exist? Look, I like food with a bit of a kick. My parents once owned a Mexican restaurant. I like Thai food. I like Indian food. I absolutely love curry. Yet, there comes point where a dish becomes so spicy that you can no longer taste it. All you can taste is fire and brimstone. Apparently, the world has become obsessed with making food too painful to enjoy. The ghost pepper has since been supplanted as the world’s most inedible peer, by the Trinidad Scorpion Butch T pepper in 2011, the Carolina Reaper in 2013 and Pepper X in 2023. It isn’t just the sadistic farmers cultivating these blazing fruits and the chefs cooking with them. I go to the story and see bags of chips and cheese curls with pictures of flames, promising extricating pain and severe injury if you eat one. Why is this happening? Why do people want to take one of the world’s greatest pleasures and turn it into an ordeal? A meal is to be savored, not endured.

Edwin Livingston

Fairbury Boys Basketball

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