most of my life happens after midnight

yeah yeah and now what

It begins with great promise. I’m going to do X and X will be wonderful and then I’ll be happy. If I can add Y and Z to it some of the time, then life will truly attain the apex of all that is good. This is a child-like fantasy. Of course instead of X you’ll choose F or some other random letter that occurs on the way to X, then realize F is a piece of shit and think Q was really the answer all along. Then Q cannot sustain a dignified lifestyle, so it’s back to X, which then proves itself far less attainable than you’d given it credit for in the past. Not to mention Y is only functioning 30% of the time, and Z has gone from 1 to 100 to -53 on the scale so often that you’re pretty through trying to grasp it at all. So you’re left with boring P and sometimes C, with Y reoccurring some weeks but not others, and praying that the BIG, SCARY B doesn’t happen because then it’s really, really over. So while you live in fear and consternation and occasional bouts of joy, thrill, and tranquility, you’re looking for a way

back to a time

when perfection was still in the cards. Because it began with such promise.

the great hot cheeto!

I have always loved hot cheetos. Back in the 3rd grade, whoever had a bag of hot cheetos was the most popular kid in class for the day. We would eat them while playing Chinese jump rope during recess, after trying to assault each other with dirty tether balls, and maybe we’d sneak one or two during class, chewing slowly and softly to avoid getting noticed by the teacher. Sometimes my friend and I would hold contests to see how many hot cheetos we could eat without drinking any water. One of us would always cave about 3/4 into the bag, maybe because we ate the things at a rate of 2 cheetos per second and our mouths got super dry. (In more leisurely settings, you devour them thus: big pieces first, though you could eat some small ones in between - you know, if you were weak - and then you’d get to the little pieces at the bottom with a combination of deranged determination and spit on your fingers/tilting the bag into your mouth.)

I even have a disgusting/delightful hot cheeto memory. I get sea sick easily, and I ate hot cheetos once on a 5th grade whale-watching field trip. The Pacific Ocean can be very tumultuous, and the stomach did not react well to all the up and down motions of the ship that morning. My teacher told me to stare at a fixed point in the distance, and I did, but that totally failed. Cue me ejecting a stream of red upchuck over the railing of the ship. I don’t think I saw any whales that day, either.

But even that experience did not stop me from loving hot cheetos. I just stopped eating them on hardy sea voyages.

However, when I went to college in the Northeast, I discovered that very few places sold my beloved hot cheetos. Why? Not enough Asians and Latinos, I suspect- at last Wikipedia count, Massachusetts is about 82% white, and every other racial group is standing at 0.2-8%. I don’t actually know if Asians and Latinos disproportionately love and purchase hot cheetos over other minority groups, but whenever I’ve been in a neighborhood that’s predominately Asian or Latino, I find the divine HOT CHEETO. (Sadly, they were not available in Seoul, probably not even on the military base. However there were other spicy snacks to satisfy me, so I was good.) I missed them so much at school that I actually had them sent across the United States from LA so I could snack on them during finals or during desperate 3am study sessions. I’d always share them with friends, of course - sporting bright red index and thumb fingers isn’t nearly as cool as FIVE OTHER people having the same tell-tale affliction.

I mean, what’s not to love about hot cheetos? They’re the perfect balance of sweet, salty, and spicy, and then there’s that amazingly satisfying CRUNCH! - that fantastic, aural explosion accompanying every bite, an experience towards which all chips aspire. Hot cheetos, though probably cancerous to your health, are not particularly greasy, and if you wish to avoid the red finger stains, just use chopsticks (if you can’t use chopsticks or suck at it, that is sad, and you should self-edify by practicing with cheetos). Any cool drink can be paired with them, including milk, iced tea, boba, and of course water. I should try them with alcohol sometime, you know since I seem to disrespect the sanctity of my stomach lining.

When I returned to LA, I gradually readopted my hot cheeto addiction. Stopping by several small markets in Koreatown (among my most frequented neighborhoods in LA), I noticed that there were several variations of hot cheetos popping up. I always vaguely knew about such things as hot cheetos with lime, but never felt particularly compelled to stray from the original.

But every woman needs a little variation in her super hot, super salty snack foods. Really, why NOT try all the hot cheetos in the world?

So today I taste-tested two different kinds of hot cheetos:

To be honest, one of them is not technically a hot cheeto: the one on the left is a “Cheddar Jalapeno Crunchy Cheeto,” which is more of the cheesy cheeto variety. But it has jalapeno, so I guess it’s bridging the gap between the cheesy and the hot cheeto. The bag on the right is the “Flamin’ Hot Crunchy Limon Cheeto,” essentially regular hot cheetos with lime flavoring.

Here are my findings for each:

Cheddar Jalapeno Crunchy Cheeto

The Cheddar Jalapeno Crunchy Cheeto is shaped like a regular “Flamin’ Hot” hot cheeto, but it’s yellow and cheddar-y like the puffy cheese cheetos available in most regular  supermarket chains (Vons, Ralphs, etc.) Given this shape, these cheetos are less puffy than the regular cheese cheeto, but they have the snappy crunch I favor in the hot cheeto. When you eat one, it certainly tastes of cheddar cheese, but the  jalapeno flavor arrives immediately afterward, and the whole experience sort of resembles eating a nacho that you’ve dipped in cheese and pickled jalapeno sauce - except more subdued and therefore not as good. You know how culinary deconstructionists aka molecular gastronomes try to give their food the ESSENCE of what other foods taste like? I think the Cheddar Jalapeno Crunchy Cheeto attempts to do that. On that count, it mostly fails, because nothing can be as delicious as fresh warm nacho chips dipping into melted cheese, with the piquant addition of jalapenos, BUT - it’s still really yummy in its own cheap snack food way, and for that I give it a solid B. If the jalapeno were spicier and more arresting, it would probably go up to a B+.

Flamin’ Hot Crunchy Limon Cheetos

Like the Cheddar Jalapeno Cheeto, this bag of cheetos is shaped like a regular hot cheeto and has that enviable crunch factor. Unlike the muted (some appreciators might call it subtle) jalapeno flavor in the previous bag of cheetos, however, the “Limon” or lime flavor of these hot cheetos is front and center as soon as you bite into them. In fact, they kind of remind me of the Doritos chips with Lime, in that with both chips, the sharp, sour taste of the lime is not properly blended in with the rest of the chip flavor. Although the Limon Cheetos are still spicy like regular hot cheetos, the lime flavor is too overpowering for me, and I also think its saltiness dominates the sweetness necessary in the cravability of a hot cheeto. These “Limon” cheetos would taste better when eaten with a mellower food item that would balance out its flavors, like buttered popcorn. Mmm, that sounds good actually… But overall, this bag gets a B-, as it suffers in comparison to the regular Flamin’ Hot hot cheetos, and I actually prefer the Cheddar Jalapeno cheetos to these as well.

Xxtra Flamin’ Hot Crunchy Cheetos

So this is a hot cheeto I actually had to LOL at, because my friend Jess was telling me about them and how they were available in select Koreatown 7-11s, but I couldn’t believe they existed until she bought one for me two wks ago (already opened and pilfered from, haha). Now, the question is: IS THE HYPE REAL? Are these hot cheetos in fact “XXTRA,” perhaps even “TWICE As Hot!” as the original Flamin’ Hots? (Maybe the advertising I should be quibbling with is the douchy Cheeto panther who exhales massive dragon flames, but that’s for another time.)

When I first started to crunch on them, they seemed just as hot as any regular hot cheeto. But after about three Xxtra Hot Cheetos, my throat more than my mouth started to protest. As in, it felt ticklish from the spice, and maybe like about to swell and close up on me. I had to finish the small 99 cent-sized bag in 3 separate portions, which is very unusual for me. I think these are indeed twice as hot as regular hot cheetos, but I don’t know if they’re spicy in as pleasurable a manner as the regular hot cheetos, which as I stated previously have attained a perfect mix of salt, sugar, and spice. But I did finish the bag, because they were fun to eat and reminded me of the days when I actually needed to STOP eating hot cheetos momentarily to alleviate my mouth-stress with water. So that was enjoyable in a sick way. If you like to punish yourself with food, this is the perfect snack for you. I will award these hot cheetos an A-, but really, the original Flamin’ Hot Crunchy Cheetos still remain the golden standard.

Thus ends my hot cheeto post. Totally funner than studying for LSATs this morning. I wish you all good luck in your cheeto adventures. :D