Playing with Fire

Today, Gllen decided to make his famous spicy hot wings. When he does this, I usually have to prepare for a lot of open windows and aeration in the apartment. He chops up habeneros and sautes them until the entire house is lethal with pepper gasses.

As he was preparing his sauce, he started to cough and sneeze more than usual. Super spicy habeneros. He was literally doubling over and expactorating on the floor. I yelled at him to cover his mouth.

He worked for four and a half hours grilling up 240 wings. Go big or go home. At some point, I fell asleep on the couch. I woke up to gasps, and grunts. Blearily, I focused my eyes on the living room, my gaze finally resting on a plate on the coffee table, filled with bones of chewed up wings. Gllen was bent over another plate full of spicy wings, hacking his way through each fiery bite.

I have never heard so many guttural noises coming from my boyfriend in one day. He polished off at least two dozen wings. Later, we went to go look at a house, and on our way back, I asked him if he would like a treat. He replied, "I don't think I need anything. My stomach is growling."

Confused, I asked, "Like in a hungry way, or in a diarrhea way?"

He stared straight ahead at the road and stone-faced replied, "Fire-rhea."

He IS the White Elephant

Gllen was able to go to one of my holiday gatherings this year because it occurred early. With my Mom's side of the family, our holiday celebration has come to include lots of cocktails, appetizers and the dice game.

In preparation for the party, we stole the Ricketts' Buffalo Chicken dip recipe. Gllen tried to convince me that we needed to make a practice version of it. I denied him. Even without a dress rehearsal, the dip came out delicious. We both ate our fair share and there were no leftovers when we left.

So, other than eating a good portion of dip and drinking about 9 beers, Gllen was pretty quiet. Until the dice game. That's when things got rowdy.

After the first round, Gllen had acquired a good amount of gifts - one being a DIY coloring kit for a velvet poster. He actually seemed excited about it. So, now it was time to steal gifts. With so many treasures to pick from, Gllen turned to me and said, "I know exactly what I'm going for first." I glanced around the room. Could it be the slotted spoon? The carton of Whoppers? The spiral notebook?

When he rolled his first set of doubles, he shouted out, "Sauerkraut!" Yes. Someone had thrown in a can of sauerkraut as a joke, and Gllen had been vying for it from the moment he laid eyes on it. I laughed with the rest of my family. It wasn't until he rolled doubles again and shouted "BEETS!" that I almost died.

I announced the room, "We just broke up. Seriously. It's over." Gllen leapt up and claimed his prize, unconcerned about the status of our relationship. My cousin looked relieved that he had taken it. But now Gllen had, in his opinion, the best gifts there.

No one tried to steal them back from him.

Burning

Gllen is famous for making these spicy-as-hell wings. I think he picked up the recipe from the food network, but ever since I've been dating him, he's been making these fire-hot wings, so at this point I feel this recipe is truly his own. I remember a time when I was constantly nauseated and unappetized by even the most juicy fast food hamburger... he made these wings and I practically inhaled them. However, the miracle wings come with a price: the process in which he cooks them involves walking through purgatory.

He literally sautes about six habanero peppers and then adds Louisiana hot sauce and honey. This process fills the entire house with the equivalent of the deadliest mace on the market. As he cooks, he coughs and sneezes and I'm sure I've heard our neighbors doing the same. I try to retreat, but the poisonous aromatics follow wherever you go.

He makes about 6 pounds of chicken anytime he does this recipe, so that he'll be able to eat wings for days. Today, he was reheating a portion of the batch he made yesterday. As he sat down on the couch to eat, he had barely taken a bite before he got up again to turn off the fan that was blowing in cool night air. I asked him why he would turn the fan off, knowing that his most hated physically ailment is being hot. He responds, "It cools off the wings too fast." As if anything could extinguish the fires of hell.