I work with some great people, but don't find any of them especially spicy. (No offense, smart a**es, but only Senior fans my flame.) However, as my female peers can attest, "hot" has a whole new connotation for those of us of a certain age. In fact, there was a time when I could go from room temperature to spicy hot in about four seconds flat, usually followed by a lot of arm flapping and the removal of outer layers. Add in a relative increase in the ambient air temperature and the power of suggestion, and before you knew it my cubicle coworker was doing the caliente conga right along with me. This was getting to be exhausting until the day we found a treasure.
A burly sports-obsessed finance nerd who sat near us left the company unexpectedly. We mourned his departure in the usual manner, by pilfering all the stuff left in his caddy. (To clarify, typical companies give you a desk with a few drawers, but I don't work for a typical company. We have tables with little side carts, known as caddies.) Tucked away behind his stapler, some obsolete files and an AFC championship glass was the golden prize - a small tabletop oscillating desk fan! The most surprising thing was the color; a peachy-pink plastic that certainly didn't match his manly-man persona. We were not sure why he had this fan, as we had never seen him use it, but frankly we didn't care. We plugged it in and spent the entire summer basking in the cool breeze as it bobbed back and forth between our seats.
We've shuffled cubes a few times since then, and I lost track of that pink fan. The passage of time combined with good meds have pretty much alleviated my spicy hot days. But I like to think that Pinky lives on, helping others in the sweaty sisterhood make it through the day.
Yeah, I left out the salsa. So here's my tip, stolen from a coworker! Make an easy rustic homemade salsa. Serve it with Scoops tortilla chips and sliced jalapenos (fresh or pickled). To eat, put a jalapeno slice in a Scoop before loading up on the dip. It fits perfectly and still leaves room for plenty of salsa goodness. Here's a recipe I like:
ReplyDeletehttp://recipes.sparkpeople.com/recipe-detail.asp?recipe=227720