Salsa judge learns meaning of 'homemade' at Community Day
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MATTAWA — It all started when Maggie Celaya asked me if I would like to help judge the salsa competition, and without thinking it through, I replied “Absolutely!”
I really love spicy foods. I love to collect hot sauces. If there’s a bottle I don’t own, I have to have it.
There isn’t hardly a food to which I don’t add sauce. Having said that, I was ill-prepared for this simple task that I was about to begin.
After agreeing to take part, and noticing that I would be the only “white” judge, my first thought was, “I am going to blow the non-spicy-food-eating-gringo stereotype right out of the water!”
As the Bible says, though, pride was about to take me down.
We used spoons to taste each of the five entries. I grabbed a spoon and tried the first salsa. I should have known what was in store for me when one of the judges gasped a little when she saw how much was on my spoon.
I tasted the salsa anyway. I actually tasted it twice, licking my spoon clean. It had a good flavor, with a stronger tomato taste and it wasn’t very spicy… at first.
About 15 seconds later I noticed some heat building. A few seconds after that, more heat!
Apparently, someone had stumbled upon some sort of magical disappearing-reappearing heat source to ward off their enemies. This threw me off my game. Where was this heat coming from? It wasn’t there when I first ate the salsa! How was this happening?
It’s important to explain my heat levels. Just as peppers have the Scoville heat scale, my body has something similar. Level 1 is the sniffles. This level is good. I like this level.
The next level is sweating and a tingling head. This level is a warning, as in: “If you go any farther, tomorrow is going to be a bad day!”
My third level is the hiccups and this is: Uh oh. Level 3 means I’m running for the milk, and there are usually tears involved, followed by immediate regret and self-doubt.
After the first salsa, I was in level 1 but clearly on my way to level 2. I then sampled the second salsa entry. This one had a great flavor and was my favorite salsa… or at least I think it was.
You see, with the first salsa the heat was slow to rear its head, but this second salsa was not shy in the least bit. I was sniffling. I was sweating. My head was now tingling, and my lips were numbing.
I began to doubt my resolve to finish, but I couldn’t quit. How sad would that look? I had to finish! If not for me, then for all of the spice-impaired gringos out there. I had to power through!
I then tasted the third salsa, and my first thought was: “Are you kidding me?”
They just kept getting hotter with every taste! I looked around for water, and there was none. I looked at the other judges and noticed something disturbing; no one else seemed to be affected by this hot lava that I kept putting into my mouth.
I had tears coming down my cheeks, but I was able to conceal them pretty well. In fact, I was actually doing a pretty good job at hiding my reactions to this radioactive material.
That is until I sampled salsa entry No. 4. Hiccup! I can hide the sweating, tingling head and the sniffles okay, but not the hiccups.
Salsa No. 4 called my bluff. Not only did I have the hiccups, but they were violent hiccups. This was a first for me. I quickly asked about the whereabouts of the water that was mysteriously missing.
Some gentle soul handed me a bottle of water, but the hiccups were so violent that I couldn’t catch my breath for a second to even drink the water. I was no longer trying to hide the tears streaming down my cheeks.
Eventually I was able to chug that bottle of water. While I did though, I heard something that actually frightened me. The other judges were talking about how ridiculously hot the last entry was.
It looked like just a bowl full of hot pepper seeds!
Why were they doing this to me?
Is this some sort of conspiracy?
Had I wronged someone, and this was a concerted effort to get me?
Resolved to complete my task (or perhaps the heat had fried the sensible-thinking part of my brain), I sampled the last entry and expected the worst.
To my astonishment, I don’t know if the last entry was very hot or not. Apparently the pain I was feeling, or the lack of feeling in my mouth could not get any worse than it already was! I couldn’t even tell if I still had a tongue in my mouth.
I quickly spouted off my top three entries, which means I simply pointed to three bowls, and I got the heck out of Dodge! I made an immediate bee line for the snow cone booth to drown my sorrows, having learned a hard lesson: After pride, comes the fall!
Congratulations to the winners of the salsa contest, and I’m sorry for whatever I did to offend you! (See you again next year!)
Your humble & naïve salsa judge
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