I Love Spicy Food

Tagged with black pepper, chicken, food, herbs, salsa, spices on January 2, 2024

Until I used vinegar to solve my problems with acid reflux and heartburn, I avoided spicy food as much as possible. If I found myself in a position where I couldn’t avoid it, I was sure to carry antacid tablets with me. Today, I love all kinds of spicy food, probably more than I should.

Spicy Franks

Regardless of what you call it, a frankfurter is a type of sausage used mostly inside a hot dog bun. Well, in the United States, anyway. I see a lot of Filipinos (in the Philippines) eating one or more with rice, and usually for breakfast.

My wife, Josie, grabs “Pure Foods Deli Spicy Pepper Beef Franks” whenever we go shopping for food locally. We’ve never found anything like them when we’re in the United States. She buys them because she knows I prefer them to sausage links or patties. I try to refrain from eating pork for breakfast, unless it’s bacon.

Fried Chicken

I don’t know why, but I don’t like regular fried chicken. It tastes almost flavorless to me. In the United States, I like the spicy chicken from Popeye’s, if there isn’t a Jollibee within a reasonable distance. I like the spicy chicken from Jollibee, regardless of which country I’m in.

As far as spicy chicken sandwiches are concerned, I don’t like the Jollibee version. It’s because of the salad dressing they use instead of mayonnaise. I like the KFC Zinger, their spicy chicken sandwich offering, but I would like it more with less mayonnaise. It may just be the particular KFC we usually go to, but they seem to smother it with mayonnaise, so much that it’ll drip from the sandwich.

I like the spicy chicken sandwich from Popeye’s. McDonald’s had a limited run of the “McSpicy” chicken sandwich, and it was awesome. The “McCrispy” is nothing like it, and it isn’t spicy at all.

Although she doesn’t do it as often as I would like, Josie makes both buffalo wings and hot wings (which are a little hotter). She makes enough to last for more than a week, as long as I don’t share them with anyone else.

Other Spicy Food

When Josie and I were staying with our younger son, Jon, and his family in Hawaii, we often ate at places we all could enjoy. One of them was the GEN Korean BBQ House in Aeia. That chain of restaurants is in multiple locations and in multiple states. They even have one in metro Manila, but it’s way too far away for us to travel just for dinner.

When Josie cooks “American” food, it tends to be spicy, even if it isn’t meant to be. When she makes spaghetti, she uses Ragù spaghetti sauce and usually adds more spices to it. When she makes tacos, she adds a spicy taco sauce to the lean ground beef she uses. We use salsa instead of toppings of onions and tomatoes. I like it medium hot, but she can only handle it mildly hot.

Although it’s not real spicy, I tend to add black pepper to a lot of things, including my eggs in the morning (when I have eggs). It just seems to make those things taste better. Some people like Chef Boyardee canned food. I can barely tolerate it, regardless of which pasta is being represented, unless I add a lot of black pepper to it.

Image by Steve Buissinne from Pixabay