Dining: Bring on the Heat!

Well, I've been enjoying a surge of interest (read: obsession) with spicy food. There's certainly some element of machismo in the whole thing, but mostly I just think it makes the food taste terrific.

The well-publicized reason for this, of course, is that the pain sensations trigger an endorphin release. Like other things like this, this has addictive qualities. Fortunately, it's an addiction that might actually have positive effects.

After a recent trip to the Mt. Horeb Mustard Museum, I acquired two lovely high-heat hot sauces, Dave's Insanity Sauce and Da' Bomb: Beyond Insanity. At 80,000 and 120,000 Scoville units, a single drop of either is enough to make a bowl of chili too hot for most people I know to eat. (Heck, a single drop might be enough to make a whole pot of chili too hot for a lot of people to eat. That's awesome!)

Now that they're in my possession, I'm trying to lure others (you?) to the dark side. While searching around for some information on peppers for a coworker, I stumbled across a collection of stories of spicy stuff gone awry. Everybody has such a story, sure, but some of these are pretty funny, and I decided to share.