Dear World: I Have Gained 20 Pounds Since Arriving to America

This dish is rubbing off on me—AND ONTO MY DOUBLE CHIN

I’m Ash, and I’m a writer, traveler, nonconformist & nomad, and every week I’m sharing funny field notes from around the world. Currently, I’m in America writing about what it’s been like to return home to my small town, twenty years after living abroad.

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I have gained twenty pounds since arriving in America.

I blame this entirely on one culprit, and one culprit only, and it is not the hamburger, nor the hot dog, nor barbecue ribs (bush league), nor meatloaf, which would be a weird thing that only perverts crave. No, rather, my American love handles are the result of an American obsession that only keeps growing in size, along with my double chin:

The buffalo obsession.

Here in America, everything is buffalo’d. Buffalo chicken wings, buffalo chicken pizza, buffalo chicken french fries, buffalo chicken egg rolls, buffalo chicken sandwiches, buffalo chicken chili, buffalo chicken mac and cheese bowls (which I had in Vermont and then promptly let out a weird little cry at the bar). There’s even buffalo cauliflower, and buffalo shrimp, and buffalo quinoa bowls, and buffalo zucchini boats. Because, yes, zucchini needs all the help it can get. (But you will never be a potato skin, my tragic little friend.)

Growing up here, buffalo sauce was NOT A THING. Not until the early 2000s, when I was graduating high school. That’s when I ate my first dozen hot wings with my high school sweetheart. We would get them every Friday night, along with a buffalo-wing pizza, which was life-changing. Nirchi’s was the best. We would drive a half hour across New York state border to get a sheet of it, which for the uninitiated, is a thick square pizza cut into small square slices, like a Sicilian. It officially is 100% superior to all other pizzas, and yes I am saying that directly to every person who prefers thin. If you prefer thin, you belong in the same category as the meatloaf pedos.

In college I started begging Papa Johns to include a side of buffalo sauce. One time a new boyfriend, who was the catcher of the baseball team and could freestyle rap like Eminem and would take me home to his Italian family and is now a state trooper, ordered us Papa John’s and they forgot to include the buffalo sauce so he called them back and made them come back to the dorm. I was mortified but secretly thrilled: pizza without buffalo sauce is just mediocre bread.

When I first left the country to study abroad in 2004, the plot thickened: there was no buffalo sauce for thousands of miles. A friend once shipped me a bottle of Frank’s all the way to Central America, and it cost her a small fortune. Later, when living in Santiago, Chile, we would eat Tapatío that my best friend would bring in her suitcase from California. Apparently Tapatío was a thing there. We would arrive back to her apartment after thrilling nights flirting with men in a foreign language making out with men in a foreign language, and we would make “dillas,” which we mockingly pronounced as an American from Kansas, which consisted of an open-faced tortilla covered in a thick layer of melted cheese and a coating of Tapatío. My hot sauce love affair survived.

Later I would be introduced to Cholula and Sriracha, both of which are about as close to American buffalo sauce as pumpernickel is to my asshole. Don’t even get me started on Tabasco, my #1 sworn enemy in this fight. There is a moment in every young woman’s life when she will ask for a side of hot sauce and they will put a bottle of Tabasco on the table and you will suddenly and swiftly understand the truth about this cruel, cruel world: some people are primitive fleas.

The closest thing I ever got in Italy was pepper flakes & olive oil, which I will absolutely take (but it’s still not hot sauce). Spain has their patatas bravas, which I exclusively order for the spicy red sauce on top. (Though am always let down when it tastes more tomato sauce-y than spicy sauce-y.) In Scotland I seek out Indian, because we all know that some of the best Indian cuisine outside of India is found in the UK. And Mexico has an assortment of delicious, wonderfully spicy sauces, all of which I am a fan, but none that might make me, say, murder a priest. If that sounds over the top, now you know how strongly I feel about American buffalo sauce.

That is why I should have known what would happen.

I should have known that coming back here would be like entering a Charlie Chocolate Factory full of vinegar-based cayenne pepper utopia. It’s everywhere, on every menu. Some days it seems like there is nothing but hot sauce, particularly in the rural region here in the northeast where I bought the old farmhouse. After all, I’m only 3 hours away from Buffalo, New York, where this supernatural elixir was first invented in the 80s. This is a shangri-la.

Last night I got Nirchi’s hot wing pizza. It tastes exactly the same as it did in high school: like promised land. Oh yes, this plate is full of promises: that your face is going to slowly swell, that your forearms are going to look like little sausages, that you’re going to realize one day with horror that you can’t quite shave your privates as easily as you used to. And yet, here I am, heating some up. (I’m ordering a defibrillator as we speak.)

Don’t worry though, I have a Peloton! I also have heartburn. But, like the addict I am, it’s a worthwhile trade. I wonder how many of us there are? I’m starting to worry about myself. Can food even be food anymore without a bottle of Frank’s? The last time I had oysters, I found myself even putting some on that. It’s embarrassing, of course, like the person who puts ketchup on their steak. I would absolutely judge you for that. But, pull a bottle of hot sauce out of your pocket, and I would be kneeling in your honor.

Some say it’s a millennial thing.

Some say it’s a working-class thing.

Yet, I have a sneaky suspicion that the American obsession with hot sauce actually arose as a part of American diet culture: I started adding it to everything because it had zero calories. Compared to what we all learned were “fattening” condiments as teenagers—ranch, mayonnaise, sour cream, BBQ sauce—hot sauce was a way to add flavor to our plain grilled chicken breast, to our naked baked potato, to the tops of our hard-boiled eggs as we low-carbed our way through our eternal quest to fit into a size two.

I’m no longer on a permanent low-carb diet, but hot sauce has become a permanent part of my identity.

Maybe this is why a part of me feels so at home, back here in America. It is not because of the language, nor the weather, nor the way Americans are excitable, optimistic, chatty little slobber mouths.

It is because home is found in the tiniest of moments, in the smallest of details, in the darkness of kitchens, in the quietness of routines, in the comfort of the foods we eat, and in the solace of the things we love.

And I can think of no better ingredient.