That Elusive Spot

Maybe the spot is activated and waiting to be hit when you have a combination of factors present, the perfect storm.

For me, it would be when I was physically tired, mentally slightly frazzled. Then, it's important to be in the right environment. Can't hit the spot in the middle of a crowd, or noisy environment.

Having your spot hit induced an immediate relaxation, effective even when you didn't know there was anything to relax.

I woud agree with Chai here.

The right combination of events. Perhaps, de-stressing.

It's the M spot on my tongue. M stands for quite hot mashed potatoes with a little half and half and salt and butter and garlic. There's a nerve directly from there to the happiness zone in my brain.

Now I have to worry about an F spot as well as a G spot?

And it's really elusive?

Oy veh!

osso, The spot is hit every time? Amazing. I don't have such a spot on my tongue. With me the spot is hit and miss.

deb, You don't have to worry about alphabetic spots.

Is "hit the spot" an American expression? Maybe so.

I'm sure that your spot has been hit many times. You just called it something else--or you don't call it anything at all.

Don't worry. You can scratch the oy veh.

Recently I took up barbecuing, for the first time in several years. The old pit was still capable. It had a drip ring intended for a stove in the bottom, to hold out most air flow and hold in ashes and cinders. I fired that sucker up and soon had some ribs on the grill. After they cooked a good while, I became tired from sitting in the hot weather to tend them. No problem. By this time the flavor was sealed in. I put the ribs in the oven, drenched them with barbecue sauce and left them alone for a good long while. Would ambrosia be too strong a description? Those ribs hit the spot in a way nothing compares to for a good two or three years. Got to do it again, real soon.

I wanted to compose a paean of praise to that barbecue.

edgar, Is does a body good to get their spot hit in such a way. It even did me some good, and I'm all the way over here.

You wanna write a paean? I wanna read it.

for me, hitting the taste spot has to do with time. It can only happen with something I haven't had in a long time. The first beer of summer. The first latke after a year or two break. I can only think of one thing that can hit the spot several meals in a row for me - cold cherry soup. Everything else suffers from familiarity breeding contempt.

the annual waffle ice cream at the fair

that one needs the crowds and noise to make the taste 100% perfect

Well, not always. I like fresh-ish potatoes, am picky towards yukon golds or reds, a personal matter. When ex and I used to visit HG and cook with him (he basically taught us about food and we helped him get to restaurants around the large city and provided argumentation/discussion), sometimes his refrigerator was fraught. I've made mashed potatoes with milk dribbles or yogurt or sour cream or with olive oil or g'knows what. Stuff at hand. They were often good, but not always, and not spot hitting (but his supplies on really good fish and meat were beyond my ken from then 'til now).

I don't have good mashed potatoes often, but when I do, my tongue knows and soon, my brain.

I could never drink five cups of coffee during the day. Coffee is a morning drink, one, two, maybe three cups max. Once it hits 12, or sometimes 11, it has to be tea.

Me and HG, at a great restaurant a long time ago, photo taken by hub.

No mashed potatoes at that meal, but one of the best meals ever for me.

I use to drink a lot of coffee but I don't drink it at all anymore. I don't think I ever hit that elusive spot as you describe. I would say that what you are referring to is probably a reaction of endorphins being released which results in some pleasure. When that happens a person can feel a moment of contentment and completeness.

If anyone cares, the reason I stopped drinking coffee is because of the effects of copper on the body. Coffee has a lot of copper but a lot of foods have copper as well so it is very easy to be reach a copper toxicity point. A lot of simple medical issues can be solved by reducing copper amounts in the body.

I've had coffee that hit the spot. I'm picky poo.

Diane and I went recently to a place called Napoli on Carlisle here in Abq.
I don't consider Abq a haven of good coffee, including at my own house as I don't buy good beans. Many of you know me as an italophile, from my first cappuccino at the Milan airport after a million hour flight with delays, when I was asleep standing. It only got better from there, after the next five hour delay with the missionaries from Mexico gathering to sing as we started to board the plane to Rome, where we had been headed in the first place and our luggage was waiting. That first cup of ital coffee hit the spot for good.

If I remember, at least back then, most ital coffee was made with robusta beans, famously second rate lately, which I'm not all that sure of trusting the rating of. I put my connection re caffe in italy down to process, re the roasting and the macchina the espresso was shot out of. Not all were tip top, but some were coffee nirvana, from espresso shots to lattes.

Anyway, she got a concoction (I'm no fan of concoctions so far, and f'the caramel macchiatos (macchiati?) that seem popular) and I got a short double espresso latte, no foam. I don't believe in foam, I believe in crema, the bubbly bit that happens with espresso. Wrong time of day, but I didn't want to play hard at a new shop.

It was just plain wonderful. Curative.

Diane tried it and started wanting explore good espresso.

oh Osso - what a fabulous photo... love that.






the spot... Crème brûlée does it every time... mmmmmm mmmmmmmmmmmm goooooood!

Back when I used to drink coffee in the lab, it was just, em, slop, a mechanism we all were used to.

When I first started, I both ran a clinical lab and did the work by myself and had a nice big coffee pot for the lab workers on the entire floor. That was in retrospect stupidly subservient for me as a woman and very good socially, as all the bosses also came to visit for the drecko coffee. I didn't mean it either way. I just thought it was useful for us all. I can't remember if I paid for the coffee, not sure. I don't think I had a kitty fund, at the least, no room for one.

We say hit the spot.

Really good laksa or yum cha hits it for me......or a GOOOOOOD coffee.....had one Thursday....

I do get that you perceive that the spot isn't always there, Robbie.

I haven't worked that out yet, thinking.