I don’t like shrimp, either!

Wendy, I am sensitive to Laurie’s preferences when making dinner, except that sometimes I make shrimp even though Iris and I like it and Laurie doesn’t.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capsaicin

(Notice the Tewksbury citation at the end of the page…)

As to why adults become less sensitive to capsaicin over time, well, there is a chain of physiological events that causes the calcium channels in the neurons to get flooded to a point that they don’t recover. They get “stuck open”, essentially. Once this happens, the neuron doesn’t fire as readily when exposed to smaller amounts of capsaicin. Capsaicin tolerance is the result.

I wasn’t a divvier to begin with, but despite my same food for everyone policy, my six year old ceased eating anything seasoned, then mixed, around age three. His dinners still echo ours, just deconstructed. My two year old, on the other hand, ate half a quart of cumin-spiked raita tonight. Go figure.

Thanks for the previous entry on Child of Mine — fascinating book.

Carrie, I get this from Iris all the time. At one point she accused some bland breakfast sausage of being “a little spicy.” She should write ad copy.

I think your approach to divvying the pot was just right, both straightforward and thoughtful.

Whenever I ask someone if a dish is “spicy” and they say “oh, it’s not very spicy”, I know to avoid it since it will invariably be too hot for me.