(spices and endorphins)

Spices and good food can make you high.

Today I had dinner with Anne, Mag and KY... in a Malay/Indonesian restaurant (one of the two reputedly original Southeast Asian cuisine restaurants in Europe.) As it is located in SoHo, we have passed through it many times before, but tonight's dinner was our first taste of this restaurant. The spices are tastefully mixed without giving much concession to there-might-be-too-much-spices culinary suspicions, and all of us enjoyed our meal. Highlights of the night were kangkung belacan (staple veg dish), sambal kambing (interesting with a hot/zingy aftertaste) and ayam mas derwaji (leave no sauce unlapped.)

We got high after the meal and kept on laughing on what seemed to be funny... arguing on how the combined sounds of elephant and monkey would be, afterlife shopping, the jelly fish man event tomorrow, and how good our next-table neigbours' food look like - mussels! The thing was, we didn't order any house wine to go with the dishes (despite Anne's initial persistence.) It was the right thing to do because I honestly don't think spices, mutton and red wine would mix. And even without any alcohol, we managed to stay high throughout the night...

Is there a strong, direct correlation between eating/ingesting certain spices and subsequent release of endorphins?
I want to find out more about this :))

In the meantime, we folks will be staying clear of alcohol and sticking to spiced Southeast Asian fares. The food does us good when it comes to keeping our bottomless appetite satiated ^__^

Take care!