Stuart's new love

Here is a photo of my little boy, Stu. While I have always encouraged my children to try all kinds of food, especially spicy foods, (since it is almost exclusively our western European based culture that refuses to eat spicy foods, thereby negating 3/4 of the world's excellent food that is to be sampled), I never expected to have one naturally born to it. After much prompting and cajoling, my daughters have finally discovered that they enjoy a small dip of the chip into the "medium" salsa. Stu, however, figured it out before the age of two.

Several nights ago, we had "chips and cheese" as a snack, so the girls wanted a bowl full of above mentioned salsa to go with it. Stu loved it so much that when he ran out of chips, he found that a spoon worked just as well or even better than chips. He ate most of the entire bowl of "medium" salsa with a spoon.

Then the other night I noticed him with green fingers, green mouth, and watery eyes. I asked him what he had been doing, and he showed me a small handful of wet peanuts, and only then did I realize he had been into my stash of Wasabi covered peanuts, just sucking the Wasabi off, then spitting out the peanut. For those of you who know what Wasabi is (Asian mustard/horseradishy/hot sauce), you'll know that it isn't normal fodder for toddlers.

So tonight we all went to Carlos O'Kelly's for supper (kids get "Kid's Meals "for $0.99 on Tuesdays!) and Stu was TEARING UP the salsa! The picture above is his most oft found expression, as it seemed his tongue was hanging out of his mouth for most of the evening, presumably to cool it off. As anybody worth his Salsa knows, if its worth eating, it worth spicing it up!