Hot sauce challenge adds sizzle to MS lunch hour

Cuisine met science at Greenhills this week as middle school Spanish teacher Kevin Olson teamed up with science teacher Charles Dershimer to conduct a lunchtime salsa/hot sauce-tasting event.

Olson and Dershimer love eating hot sauce, so they planned a special event to share their passion with students.

After assembling a range of chips and spicy condiments ranging from Tabasco sauce to ghost pepper sauce, Olson invited middle schoolers and teachers into his classroom for lunch and an explanation, from Dershimer, of how some of the sauces work – and, equally important, what immediate remedies can help someone overcome by a too-powerful hot sauce.

Effective, according to Dershimer? Milk, because the fat content helps counteract the spice. Ineffective? Water (which just spreads around the fiery misery).

Students had an opportunity to sample some of the spicy condiments themselves as they ate lunch.

Raffle tickets were awarded to students based on the sauces they tried — how many, and how spicy.  There were over 30 different kinds of hot sauce bottles and many willing participants, so fellow middle school teacher Bridget Maldonado was busy doling out tickets to students eager to win the grand prize: their very own bottle of hot sauce to take home!  The lucky winners of the raffle were 6th grader Rishi Verma and 8th grader Jessie Schwalb.

If you’re wondering what it all looked like, check out our Flickr gallery here.