We're married now, so why am I even talking about dates? Well, church leaders have told us to have a weekly date night as married couples - still planned, paid for, and paired off.
So we had a date night last night and we discussed the success level of the date. Here's the report:
Planned: Well, we had talked about going to the Fiery Foods Festival here in Albuquerque with some friends a few weeks ago but never even looked up ticket prices or times or location until yesterday morning. Our friends had cancelled on us earlier this week so we had just assumed we wouldn't go to the Fiery Foods after all. Then I thought to myself, we could still go, right? So for the first time ever, I checked it out online. Good planning so far right? Well, it seemed cool, but it was $15 a person and we weren't sure if we would enjoy it enough to warrant $30, so we decided we wouldn't go. Now what to do?
Paid for: So, it's about 1pm and we still didn't know what to do for fun last night. We've been just watching Star Trek episodes all winter since it's been cold. But now it's warming up and I just don't feel like it counts as a date unless we leave the house. (That's not one of the three requirements though.) All of a sudden, our neighbor brought over two tickets to the Fiery Foods show that they had gotten for free and weren't going to use. Fantastic! Now, our date is paid for... Check! ...I know what you're thinking, but it counts! And, now it's planned as well. Check!
The paired off part - I'm not too concerned about. Check!
So off we went to the Fiery Foods Festival! I'm starting to feel like I really do live in New Mexico when I do things like this. We were a little apprehensive when we first walked in because we'd never been but the first booth had a great guy that explained it all to us - basically try everything but don't get sucked in by the guys who are out to initiate death by internal chemical burns. We can do that. The next booth we discovered we will need to watch the ingredients as we were offered first whiskey chile chocolate and then espresso chile chocolate. Hm... I know I'm doing a terrible job advertising this event that turned out to be extremely fun and memorable!
From that point on, we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. It's basically like going to Costco and trying every vendor but without the guilt of "I probably won't buy what you're giving me" because they have prepared for everyone to have a sample or two and they would actually be offended if you didn't sample it. We just made sure to admire their product labels (specifically the ingredients section) before we accepted any samples. Haha! Good fun!
We tried so many sauces, jellies, salsas, rubs, spices, chocolates, brittles, popcorns, jerkies, cheeses, and even some tropical drink mixes (non-alcoholic of course). Talk about some ingenious people! I'm amazed at how many people just wanted to make a fun sauce and voila! a new million dollar product that wins first prize at some competition. That'll be me someday.
I forgot to mention the best part! They had free Blue Bell ice cream that they handed out right at the entrance (to cool your mouth down if needed right?) and you could go back for more if you wanted - they didn't care.
We also did a great job avoiding the kill-ya-with-spice stuff until the very end. Poor James tried a droplet of some sauce that truly about killed him. He literally ran to the ice cream booth. He was already eating it as fast as possible when I caught up and got my own second helping of ice cream. Haha. Poor guy! He ended up eating half of mine on the way home before his mouth felt calm again.
Fortunately (and unfortunately since there were so many good flavors) we didn't take much cash with us and very few people took credit card. We did buy two things though that we loved and highly recommend. I'll find the websites or you could probably search the company online and find them. The mustard would be a fantastic sauce for hotdogs, sausages, shrimp, fish, crackers... oh it was scrumptious! And the San Francisco sauce was amazing! The guy said his wife has used that sauce as a salad dressing for years now. Funny thing is that it is mustard based as well - apparently we were craving the mustard flavor yesterday - and it would work the same types of things. We bought them so you know we like them. :D
I have to put in a plug for the Pace company here. They had a booth with their specialty salsas. And we tried a few and I loved the pineapple mango chipotle and asked the lady if it's available in regular grocery stores and she said they are but some stores don't carry every specialty flavor so she handed us a jar and said to show that to the store to request it. What a great lady! We got a free jar of salsa from Pace! Yay for Pace! I highly recommend this flavor of theirs and I also liked the corn and black bean flavor and James tried the Pico de Gallo and loved it. Anyone hungry yet?
To finish our date, we got a Papa Murphy's pizza and watched a 1951 movie The Day the Earth Stood Still. All in all, a pretty great date! (I was thoroughly exhausted and we had to keep rewinding because I kept falling asleep and missing key parts. Haha!)
In conclusion, the Fiery Foods Festival is totally worth the entrance fee. (However, our free tickets said they cost $10 so apparently if you plan further ahead and buy them online, they are cheaper. Who knew?)
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