Black Pepper.....

Not only have I become a great lover of things spicy I can't seem to get enough pepper on my food. That is, black pepper. You'll notice that if we're out to eat and I get a salad something slightly awkward will happen. The friendly waitstaff person will come around to offer freshly ground black pepper and I will enthusiastically say "Yes!". Then he/she will proceed to crank the end of the pepper mill for a few seconds. Then he/she will stop and glance at me face wondering, "Does she want to to keep going?". Surely not is always implied in their expression. Now this happens every time and to play it off I laugh and say, "Sorry, I like a lot of pepper". With this in mind they set to dumping more on my salad until I finally agree that they've given me enough. They always look relieved when taking their leave from our table. I can't help it! I love black pepper something fierce.

So two weekends ago Tim and I decided to go out for brunch before going into our respective labs for a few hours of work. We went to our favorite brunch place, Felix, and ordered the usual: scrambled eggs on toasted ciabatta with a side of hash browns. A simple meal but they really do it well. Our plates arrive at the table and I shook some salt onto my food then moved onto the serious business of dousing everything with black pepper. Now it's windy everyday in Wellington but that day was particularly windy. The gusts buffeted the restaurant doors and drafts swirled inside at any point they could. So I'm peppering away right when a huge gust of wind blew by and, you guessed it, stirred up a bunch of the pepper I was just depositing on my food. I looked over at Timmy through a cloud of pepper and then we heard a sneeze from the guy sitting at the next table. Sure enough I had such a ridiculous amount of pepper that people at other tables were inhaling it, sneezing and wondering what in the world was happening?! :)