Hot and Spicy

Our New Year's Day was spent puttering around the house and it was wonderful.  I frankly love puttering.  My objective for the day was to put away Christmas decorations and do some general organization as well as getting rid of things we don't need or aren't using.  The kitchen was the main priority.  I reorganized the Tupperware drawer, went through the cabinets to determine what needed to be used, and reorganized stuff so it actually fit in the cabinet.  This process led to a counter of random items that needed used and some opportunity to be creative.  I decided to make a trail mix with the handful of cheerios, the almost empty bag of broken pretzels, 2 chunks of almond bark leftover from the holidays, and a half used bag of M&M.  I melted the almond bark and mixed in the trail mix and it was wonderful.  I think I will use the random box of mac and cheese with the random can of SPAM together sometime next week for some concoction.  

Arthur loves Asian food so I thought I would whip up some Peanut Pad Thai for him since cooking is a sure-fire way to a man's heart.  At one of the white elephant gift exchanges this year we received a jar of spicy peanut butter.  I have never seen this before and thought it might had a little kick in the peanut sauce I was making for the Pad Thai.  It turned out to be more of a Walker Texas Ranger roundhouse kick to the mouth.  We are both feather weights when it comes to spicy food so this was out of our league.  I think Arthur made it through 3 bites and I handled about 7 or 8 before we threw in the towel.  We also consumed about a 1/2 gallon of milk in the process.  Even my gums were on fire.  Further investigation showed that the label on the jar read "The Heat is On"-- no false advertising here.  The ingredients included cayenne peppers, chili powder,and red pepper flakes.  We decided to toss out the whole kit-and-caboodle which was difficult since we hate to waste food but realized the alternative plan of consuming it ourselves could lead to third degree burns in our mouths.  Then Arthur called in and ordered a pizza which was great.  The one silver lining is that I have had a cold and stuffed up sinuses this past week but a few bites of Peanut Pad Thai cleared it up for several hours.  I'm pretty sure that Arthur would have persevered and eaten the entire bowl if necessary as to not insult my cooking.  Of course if I can't eat my own cooking then it isn't an insult--right?  His comment was that I once drank a large oatmeal smoothie that was the consistency of liquid plywood once just because he made it for me  (it was truly awful) and he was willing to suffer equally.  Sometimes love does require suffering for one another but I think there are limits and eating spicy Pad Thai is one of those.  Omnia Vincit Amor.