Medium.

"Are you sure?" our server asked.

We looked at each other. The menu was basically one large CAUTION sign, suggesting that the diner was probably was not up to it, spice-and-heat-wise. This wasn't our first time at the Thai restaurant rodeo, though. We thought we were man enough. We thought we were okay with medium. But our server gave us pause.

So we went with mild, which was, as it turned out, as hot as we could go, and maybe just a little bit more so. Even though at our regular Thai place, medium was fine, at this place, which was really, really good, medium would have been too hot, and that would have been a tragedy.

I remember when I first started eating spicy food--Indian--I thought the hotter the better. I loved it. I remember going to a place just a few blocks from my place of employ for lunch. One day, I suggested going there to a colleague. He looked doubtful. He said, "I have a meeting after--I was sort of hoping I wouldn't be digesting on the outside of my body." A good description--the heat sort of radiating from the inside out after eating curry.

At our regular Thai place, I can usually get curry--Panang is my favorite--at medium heat, but we have the papaya salad at mild. "With just one pepper," I always say when we order it, holding up the one finger. Because more than one pepper  drastically affects my enjoyment and even my ability to eat it. It wasn't always this way. But now, it is. It just is, and no amount of aspirational ordering, nostalgic for the heat, will ever make it otherwise.

One of my favorite New Yorker cartoons has a man sitting up in his bed, the Angel of Death standing at the foot. "I'm the Angel of Death," he says. "I'm here to take your muscle tone and your ability to digest fried foods. That's all for now." I remember when I was in my early 40s and I was all hahahahahahaha I can still digest fried foods. And my muscle tone's not bad either! And then BAM. Fried food, spicy food--I am the equivalent of a woman of Scandinavian descent in the 50s who worries about too much garlic. It's tragic.

Today, after a couple of weeks of not enough sleep, I woke up with my payback-cold. My body's making me slow down for a minute, DayQuil and green tea. We had leftover Thai food in the refrigerator. I heated it up, ate my curry, the medium heat feeling plenty spicy. It was hot and it was hot, medium hot. It made my lips tingle and it cleared my sinuses. For the moment, and a few moments afterward, it was just right.

Cake at midnight.

I try not to whine, but sometimes it just doesn't seem fair that cake can't be a part of everyday life. Amanda Hesser, in her "Recipe Redux" piece in the NYTimes Sunday Magazine, mentions that back in the day, people used to make cake every couple of days, "after the previous one vanished to crumbs."

I will pause, so that you may reflect.

A new cake twice a week, let's say, just to be reasonable. Which would mean you would eat a little cake most days of your life. Why wouldn't that be a good way to live?

This observation inspired me to leap up from my Sunday-evening-prone position to whip up Teddie's Apple Cake, which was the 70s era cake featured in the piece. You bake it in a tube pan because it's a heavy batter and needs the extra surface to rise the little bit it's going to rise. Also, in a plus, cakes that are baked in tube pans have that attractive hole in the middle thing going on. Anyway--the recipe called for raisins and walnuts in addition to a whopping 3 cups of sliced apples (we have a whole box of McIntoshes we're going to turn into applesauce sometime soon). I substituted dried tart cherries for the raisins and left out the nuts--I love pecans, but I decided to go nutless in case one of the picky eaters (hint: this category doesn't include either me or the historian) might deign to try a slice. The recipe also only uses cinnamon as a spice, but I might try making the spices more complex if I ever bake this again--and I might.

The cake came out of the oven at about 11:15. That's right, 45 minutes short of midnight. I let it cool for about 3.5 minutes, then cut two slices out of the cake still in its pan, one for me and one for the historian. It was lovely. The apples tasted like they had almost melted and the cherries were splendid.

I might try the other recipe featured in the article too--it's a reimagining of the flavors, etc., of the old recipe, made by Boris Portnoy who's a pastry chef at Campton Place in San Francisco. It's a Spiced Soufflé Crepe With Sautéed Apples--the apples are sauteed in butter with thyme, an idea that I've never thought of but it seems like I should have. Apparently you make a batter, put the sauteed apples in, and bake it--the batter rises spectacularly, and then when you eat it, there's a crisp top, the melty apples, and a custardy bottom. I think I might start this recipe closer to dinner time, however.