Chicken wings and wonderful ways to love them

I've always liked chicken wings. The tiny amount of meat harvested from all the work you have to do to each one makes it more satisfying I guess. It's the old "nothing worth while is easy" adage.
The buffalo wing as you probably know, was started in Buffalo, New York when a college boy brought his college buddies into his parent's bar late one night and demanded food. At the time wings were generally discarded or made very little use of in homes or restaurants.
The most popular way the story is told is that the mother of the hungry boy, Teressa Bellissimo, was either short on other mainstay foods, short on time or short on patience with her sons' loud group of friends. Since she had a large quantity of wings that were delivered by mistake instead of the backs and necks they use for their stock, she decided to throw the wings in the deep fryer. While they were cooking she made a sauce. My feeling is that she used cayenne pepper as the main ingredient as a trick to fire up the mouths of the boys that were going to eat it. She mixed the cayenne pepper, vinegar and butter in a pan and warmed it. When the wings were done, she rolled them in the sauce and served the hungry boys. I'm guessing she was the most surprised person there when they tore into the wings and raved about how delicious they were. That's basically how Buffalo Wings started, or at least that's the most accepted version.
Buffalo style wings began to show up in restaurants and bars all over the country shortly after. My family's favorite place to enjoy buffalo wings is a chain restaurant that tries to double as a sports bar. They have a hot-wing challenge I don't promote attempting for liability reasons. Being who I am, I couldn't resist the challenge. I love spicy-hot foods. Even with my well advertised low pain tolerance, the hotter the better, is my motto. I guess I should have thought it through a little more after they made me sign a wavier not to　sue　them for injuries caused by the insanely hot sauce and required me to wear surgical grade latex gloves during the challenge.
Heat from peppers are measured by Scoville Heat Units. Jalapenos and Tabasco sauce are 2500-5000 units on average. The sauce for this challenge is nearly 100,000 units. That's 20 to 40 times hotter than Tabasco or a jalapeno. If you eat 12 wings in the allotted time, you win a T-shirt that does the boasting for you because trust me, you can't talk for a few hours afterwards. After I did the challenge, my wife became a little jealous of the attention and she refused to wear my shirt when I offered. She wanted to earn her own shirt! Her need for self-punishment has never been nearly as high as mine, but by golly she was going to give it a try. Try isn't the right word because try means there is a chance of failing and that wasn't an option for her.

After the formalities were complete and the wings were brought to the table, the server said the time would start when she took her first bite. Most of our family and several friends were there to cheer her on and give expert advise. Ever try to give advise to a hard-headed German girl under severe duress? Just don't.
She grabbed the first wing and bit into it like a trained professional. You could immediately tell the taste was not what she expected. To best describe it would be like biting into a hot charcoal you fished out of the grill. No flavor really, just intense, painful heat. She finished the first one and quickly learned to quit breathing through her mouth. During the second and third wing, her face turned red and little beads of sweat began to appear above her brow. My older son suggested to quit breathing all together and just bite, chew and swallow, for which he received a venomous look from his otherwise smiling and generally sweet-natured mother.
Wings number four, five and six went down nearly as fast as the previous three and well under the time pace for success. However, her face had turned from red to more of a purple and now sweat was beading up on her cheeks.
Now halfway through the challenge, her hands started to shake as she lifted wing number seven to her mouth. Tears began to flow and her nose started to run, by the time she had finished number eight and nine. No napkins are allowed to be used during the challenge, nor can you stop to take a drink of anything. The entire table got quiet as we sat there and watched a human we all love in more pain than we could imagine suffer through the last three wings. Her hands were shaking so bad they were now useless, so she just leaned forward to the plate, pinned the wings down with her forearms and finished them with noises and moans never before heard by man.
When she was done, she sat up and became still. She whispered, "I think I'm done" in a stoic manner. You must whisper because you do not want any air coming in or going out of your mouth at this point. Her hair was a mess. Her face was glow-in-the-dark red and covered in tears, snot, drool and 100,000 heat-unit sauce. I couldn't have been more proud of her.