One of the by-products of residing in a yellow-tinged world is that one has to make serious choices regarding food. And this is something this white man understands all too well. Very early on in my marriage I realised that if I was going to take full advantage of the delicious Vietnamese home cooking placed before me then I would need to appreciate more the fiery nuances of chilli. And so I began to eat a little more chilli...then a little more...until finally I could hold my head high and look clearly into an empty bowl of Bun Bo Hue (imperial Hue-style beef soup with lots of chilli) without tears in my eyes and 3rd degree burns in my mouth! Now I stand as a proud unashamed chilli-lover who can hold his own in the heat stakes with most of his fellow Vietnamese friends. But herein lies the problem.
It seems that once you have graduated to an admirable level of chilli appreciation then it means that you struggle to eat much of anything else without chilli! Any pizza I now eat must have chilli in order to be fully enjoyed. Any meat cooked at home must have either a spicy sauce or chilli accompanying it. Any soup served up must have chilli or at the very least a good dose of pepper in it. Even the small amount of chocolate this white man eats these days tastes better if it is chilli-laced chocolate! So therein lies the lesson - beware the amount of chilli you eat! Your chilli tolerance can grow and easily turn your tastebuds into infernal heat-craving chilli addicts! If there's a CA (chilli-holics anonymous) somewhere out there can someone please let me know?!
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