DEL.ICIO.USPepper popping part of hot time at Underground Atlanta
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Monday, August 25, 2008
Colley Handspike was cool as a bell pepper Sunday.
The Atlanta resident crouched at the table, Latino music blaring, and stared intently at his meal of fiery, plump, mostly green-with-a-few-red jalapeño peppers. The challenge: Eat as many as you can in one minute. One at a time.
Mikki K. Harris/mkharris@ajc.com
Colley Handspike of Atlanta ate 20 peppers in less than a minute to win the contest Sunday to benefit the Atlanta Community Food Bank. He vowed to spend his $500 prize on his fiancee.
Mikki K. Harris/mkharris@ajc.com
Maru Gonzalez gets ready for the contest, but her strategy of eating the peppers whole without chewing landed her a third place finish.
Mikki K. Harris/Staff
Douglas Foster of Asheville, N.C., chews his peppers Sunday in the La Costeña ‘Feel the Heat Jalapeño Eating Challenge Tour’ during the Festival Peachtree Latino at Underground Atlanta. Foster rated the heat of the peppers a 6 on a scale of 1 to 10.
Handspike’s six fellow contestants, a mix of women and men, also were preparing. One woman prayed. A man and woman fist-bumped.
Jaime Rodriguez smiled and looked relaxed. This was his first competitive eating contest. “But I eat at the house three times a day,” he said, laughing.
The contest, sponsored by La Costeña, a Mexican food producer, to benefit the Atlanta Community Food Bank, was held during the Festival Peachtree Latino at Underground Atlanta.
After a false start, the contest began. Then, just like that, 87 peppers vanished, and it was over. The crowd cheered.
Handspike was the clear winner, having downed 20 peppers in under a minute.
Asked how he felt, he smiled and said, “On fire.”
La Costeña employees brought out a round of milk for the contestants. Chiles are members of the Capsicum family. Milk contains casein, a substance that surrounds and washes away the fatty capsaicin molecules.
Handspike is a home renovator who said he’s had experience with this sort of thing — he won a similar contest in Oklahoma several years ago. He chewed each pepper two or three times before gulping it down.
Handspike said he loves spicy food, especially soul food. Hot spaghetti is his favorite.
As the winner of the pepper-eating contest, Handspike walked away with $500. He said he’d take his fiancée shopping with the money.
“He was pumped up all day. He was just pacing,” said his fiancee, Dionne Shell.
The La Costena “Feel the Heat” Jalapeño Eating Challenge now travels to Chicago for a Sept. 14 mother-of-all-pepper-eating contests in which participants eat all the jalapeño they can — with no time limit. Last year, Pat “Deep Dish” Bertoletti took the title with 191 peppers consumed in 6.5 minutes.
Jalapeño, incidentally, are by no means the world’s hottest hot peppers. That honor goes to the Bhut Jolokia, a variety of chile pepper from Assam, India.
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