photo credit: Alex Trefry of Bay Area Spice Life
Alex Trefry shows off a few of the many spicy peppers she grows in her backyard garden.

We all like to turn up the heat sometimes...and there's one Sonoma County couple embracing a spicy lifestyle.

Things are pretty hot for Sam and Alex Trefry – and Alex said it all started on a whim during the pandemic.

“I just picked up a few superhot plants and peppers and, you know, let’s go ahead and put them in some containers and grown them in the driveway because it’s sunny enough and let’s see what happens,” said Alex Trefry.

'Superhots,’ are chili peppers that hit over 350-thousand Scoville Heat Units, the measurement scale used to determine a chili pepper's spice level. Growing them led the couple to trying spicy challenges online.

“So we started eating spicy hot wings with different spicy hot sauces and there’s a ‘Satan’s Toe Challenge’ that we did,” said Alex Trefry. “And it actually was really fun to do with the family and we thought, ‘Huh, I think we kinda are on to something here.’”

They're not alone. According to Datassential, a food and beverage marketing research organization, the spicy food trend extends across the country, with over 95-percent of restaurant menus featuring spicy food options.

At the time, Alex's children were 10 and 12 years old... and the Trefry family’s spice obsession coincided with the rise of the popular show Hot Ones, where host Sean Evans interviews celebrities while eating progressively spicier hot wings.

She says that they discovered a like-minded community online.

“As much as there was a want for spice out there, there weren’t really a lot of extra plants that you could just go to the nursery and find,” said Alex Trefry.

While Alex expanded her driveway garden into an online shop with more than 50 varieties of superhot plant starts, her husband Sam explored the world of pepper eating, challenging himself to eat hotter and hotter spicy foods.

“Anything really above like a ghost pepper, I’ll have this reaction where you’re body almost kind of freezes, and doesn’t want to consume any more,” said Sam Trefry. “You have to almost like push yourself because your natural reaction is, ‘Wait, I shouldn’t be eating this, this is so hot.’”

Sam calls himself the Chili Prince and he says eating superhots and other extremely spicy foods can be intoxicating.

“My fingers, my extremities will start to kinda tingle, and they can kinda tense up, like lock up. And then you’ll have this very much, like, euphoric head rush,” said Sam Trefry. “This is before the heat is really settling in.”

Sam says that for peppers like the infamous Carolina Reaper, which is over 2-million Scoville, you need to be prepared for an intense experience…

“That's kind of like a two-day experience where you'll eat it and then it's super hot and then you're going to feel when your stomach and digestion for the next couple of days,” said Sam Trefry.

Products that have extracts on them can be even more intense, and Sam Trefry says he's felt the heat before, including a popular spicy challenge from a few years ago.

“Like I ate the world's hottest chip, this thing called the One Chip that's actually taken off the market. And that was very painful,” said Sam Trefry. “That was a very, very, VERY painful experience. I was up all night on the kitchen floor kind of going over my life choices.”

Besides the physical challenge of eating spicy foods, the couple also appreciate the nuanced flavors in peppers, especially ones not generally found at the supermarket.

“Right now my favorite one is the lemon spice jalapeno. It has the heat of a jalapeno so it's somewhat more medium but it has an amazing almost like bell pepper-esque sweetness and citrus element to it,” said Sam Trefry.

In mid-June, they are partnering with Sonoma County’s Fog Belt Brewing to launch a hot wing challenge. I ask Sam if beer is a good remedy for the heat.

“It can be, but the best thing to use is peanut butter because the oil the oil of the peanut butter seems to neutralize the heat. Beer is temporary relief, but it's really not. You're just going to want another one right away,” said Sam Trefry.

“Which is fine for Fog Belt, I'm sure,” said KRCB’s Michelle Marques.

“Yes, exactly. Yeah, so there's a win-win there,” said Sam Trefry.

If you are interested in growing peppers, the UC Master Gardener Program of Sonoma County says to wait until overnight temps stay above 60 degrees before putting your starts in the ground, and be sure to keep them watered.