When Two Worlds Collide

(Post by Evan)




Regular readers of this blog recognize Liz’s passion for keeping alive the graces that accompany the art of entertaining in the home through her Gourmet Club posts. I am the lucky beneficiary of her efforts, having been educated in many of the ways of social etiquette, and also being able to eat some truly fantastic food. While I truly enjoy high-end cuisine, I spend a lot of time preparing more traditional cuisine (grilled cheese, anyone?) for our family. Last night these two related, but distinct areas had a humorous intersection.

You just have scroll down a little to read about Liz’s “SPICE Dinner” event, and my “Holy Smokes!” debacle. Go ahead, refresh your memories. I’ll wait…OK, let me set the stage now. Wesley was having a good day. He had just returned from his Judo class and wanted tacos for dinner. We had just had our taco salad a few days ago, so it didn’t really sound good to me. He was insistent, and I didn’t have anything else to counter with, so tacos it was.

The prep was simple. The onion was stronger than normal and made me cry as I chopped it. This time I double- and triple-checked that I had the chili powder and not the cayenne when seasoning the ground beef mixture. Liz and the kids prepped everything else. As we were getting ready to deploy everything to the dining room, my eyes seemed to be still teary, and Liz and the kids started to cough as if something were in the air. I felt the urge to cough as well, and couldn’t figure out where the irritant was coming from. Unwilling to believe that I had repeated my cayenne pepper disaster, I tasted the seasoned beef mixture and couldn’t believe it when my mouth ignited with flame. I quickly picked up the bottle of chili powder that was still sitting on the countertop just stared at it in disbelief. I sprinkled a little onto my finger and put it on my tongue. Yep! Cayenne. And the truth was beginning to come into focus.



After the glorious display of spices as part of the Spice dinner, it would have been a waste to just throw them out. In fact, it would make absolute sense just to return them to their original containers so they could be reused later. However that only makes sense if you actually succeed in returning the spices to their original containers. A close examination of the chili powder container revealed a telltale demarcation between the brighter red cayenne pepper, and the browner chili powder. (This finally explains why my second attempt to make the taco salad meat last week was still mouth-burning.)

Needless to say, the “chili powder” has now been removed from circulation and will be replaced at the next possible opportunity. As for the tacos? They actually became burritos when, unwilling to redo the meat, we reached for can of refried beans and heated it in the microwave. Wesley didn’t notice and Liz and I had a good laugh.