Building Up A Tolerance For Spice

I can pretty much handle my spices these days. It wasn't always like that though. Back in college, I used to work at a place that was across the street from various restaurants, among them a Taco Bell. We would all take turns making meal runs, and I was usually against picking Taco Bell because I usually thought the food there was too spicy. Yep - even the mild sauce. 

M, on the other hand, is used to spicy food. Really spicy. He eats these tiny little green peppers - no bigger than your pinky finger - RAW. He likes to have a couple with most any meal we eat, kind of like a garnish. They are so spicy that people sometimes wear gloves when they are cooking with them. They are so spicy that the one time I tried them, my lips burned for HOURS afterward. 

When we eat at places that serve Buffalo Wings, he always orders the spiciest version. Sometimes, when a particular buffalo wing restaurant has a whimsical spice-level scale, he'll end up ordering the "Nuclear" or "Insane" style wings, and the waitress will look ominously at him and ask "Are you SURE?"

It's not that the spice doesn't get to him. His nose runs and his eyes water. He just says that it's "fun" to eat really spicy food. He likes it. It's a challenge and it reminds him of eating in Pakistan. Actually, the first fast food he ever really liked eating was Taco Bell - precisely because of their spicy food. He hordes their 'Fire Sauce' packets and uses A LOT of them. He even collects them and send Ziplock bags full of them back to Pakistan - that's how much he loves Fire Sauce.

I, on the other hand, really couldn't take ANY level of spiciness when I first met M. I didn't like spicy food, I never ate spicy food, and the first few times M cooked for me, the meals probably consisted of 10% food and 90% cool-down-my-tongue-water! 

It was about two months into our relationship that I noticed I was able to take more spice that usual. We were eating at a Thai restaurant and nothing really appealed to me on the menu and I'd ordered something I didn't like at all - I don't even remember what it was, but I remember that it had chicken in some yellow sauce - with grapes in it - who cooks grapes? Anyway, I didn't like it at ALL, and M offered to switch with me. After I'd eaten a portion of his dish and liked it, he told me that he was impressed that I was able to enjoy so much spiciness. It was one of those spicy dishes that had the little dragon next to it on the menu, and I hadn't even had to rely on the water too much!

Six years later, my tolerance for spices still isn't the same as M's, but it's pretty darn good. So often we're invited to dinners and I realize that the host has obviously cut the spices in half when they were cooking for this non-desi girl. It's always me that says "Where's the spice in this briyani?!" My mother in law did that too, both when we were first married and when I visited Pakistan a year later. The first time, when they stayed with us for two months after we were married, I barely noticed and really appreciated it! The second time, when I was in Pakistan in 2004, my tolerance for spices had grown significantly after being married to M for a year and I really noticed the lack of spices. I told her that she didn't have to reduce her spices, I could take it! 

Boy did I regret that! I lasted about a day and a half before I had to go crawling back to her and say Please! Enough! Too spicy! 

In the end, I think we ended up splitting the difference.