Burnin' love

Last night, Rhett and I ate my favorite make-at-home meal: turkey tacos.  Made with lean ground turkey meat, a little bit of taco spice, peppers and onions, this is a quick, easy, yummy way to eat my favorite genre of food....and about 100x healthier than going to a restaurant for the same meal.

Usually I dig into my tacos with reckless abandon. I try to eat slowly and savor each bite, I really do, but they are simply too delicious. 

But lately, eating turkey tacos- or any other spicy food, for that matter- has been fun only for a short bit.  I've started experiencing a strange, foreign, and extremely disappointing sensation in my chest afterwards. It is called heartburn, and there's a reason for that. It burns my heart.

I say disappointing because I've noticed that all my favorite foods have been doing this to me.  Pizza (because I love those chili flakes sprinkled on top); spaghetti and turkey meatballs (again with the chili flakes, and also the acidic tomatoes in the sauce); three-bean turkey chili (my heart breaks and burns when I eat this). 

Common sense tells me to just stay away from spicy foods. As does my doctor.  But I am stubborn. These are MY FAVORITE FOODS. These foods make me happy. I love preparing them, savoring them, and then eating them again the next day as leftovers. 

There's also the small issue of my relatively recent discovery of spicy foods. And really any foods other than pizza or peanut butter. I was the girl who once ordered a hamburger at a Mexican restaurant in high school. 

(Judge all you want.  It is shameful.)

I think moving to a new city and then a new country really made me explore outside my comfort zone and try new things. None of these things are particularly brave or astounding, and I know most people were eating these foods years before I did.  The two best examples: sushi and Thai food. Once scary-to-me foods, now two of my truest, dearest loves.

So I think that's why I'm being so stubborn. I just found these foods. I love these foods. I don't care if they make my chest burn, they are delicious and I'll eat what I wanna eat!

On that note, I'm off to Rite Aid to secure some heartburn medicine...as I just had leftover turkey tacos for lunch.  Will I ever learn?

Answer: No.