Re: [CH] History
Jonathan Smillie (jonathan.smillie@gmail.com)
Thu, 19 Jun 2008 13:38:45 -0400
I got hooked as a result of my uncle Douglas and his adventurous cooking
- he was a tour manager for the Scottish Ballet and went all around the
world with them (picking up recipes along the way).
He came to visit us here in the States about five years after we moved
to Kentucky, when I was in my late teens, and one night cooked a batch
of chile con carne that nobody but two people in the house could eat- me
and him. I think we finished the whole pot off in two days. That was
when I knew I was onto something - I'd found out that I not only could
tolerate the heat, but that I liked it.
I went from strength to strength after that - I grew up with Indian food
in Scotland but discovered Thai food here and learned how to ask for
"Thai hot" to get what I wanted. Then in the early 1990s habaneros
became a mainstream (or nearly) product and I was done for. I joined the
Chile-Heads list for the first time in 1997 when I lived in Madison,
Wisconsin and had regular access to fresh chiles through the Dane County
Farmer's Market; lost track of it when I moved back here in the early
2000s, and got back on last year.
(And Doug was already calling himself old back then....)