Thursday, June 11, 2009

Death by jalapenos -or- Never scratch your nose after cutting fresh jalapenos



Beautiful aren't they? Such a rich pretty green color. Don't let them deceive you, they're tricky, nasty little things. Matt loves hot food so of course when we were at the jockey lot he bought a whole bag full of jalapenos for me to put in his food. When given the choice between hot or really hot I heard him tell the vendor, "really hot". I gave him a look, he said, "what?" I moved on. They only cost $1 for the whole bag, no big loss.

The first thing I made for him was jalapenos stuffed with cream cheese and wrapped in bacon. He says they're wonderful. I wouldn't know, I refuse to taste them. So now we have half a bag of jalapenos in our fridge. I'm trying to come up with ways to use them. I'm not very creative when it comes to those things because I despise them. Lately I've been putting them into scrambled for his breakfast, and so our story begins...

This morning I cut up jalapenos to put in Matt's eggs for breakfast. I'm generally very careful to wash my hands after cutting them, but I guess I was distracted this morning...I don't know. I went on to do some other things, one of which was make the baby's bottle because he would be getting up soon. As I was shaking it, holding my finger over the opening so that milk didn't squirt everywhere, I thought to myself, "did I wash my hands after cutting the jalapenos"? I couldn't remember so I went and washed them. Then I got to thinking, what if some of the oils got onto the baby's bottle. That could be so bad. Well, there's only one way to find out...I touched the tip of the bottle to my tongue. Immediately my tongue began to burn and immediately after that I began praising God for causing me to think of the bottle. That would have been awful had Saac got that in his mouth. So, I switched the top of the bottle and went on with my morning.

A few minutes later my nose started burning. At first I thought it was interesting, but I wasn't particularly worried, until it started burning worse. Then it finally hit me, I scratched my nose after cutting the jalapenos. I don't mean the outside of my nose. I mean the membrane inside. Seconds later I was in excruciating pain. I liken it to delivering a baby or having an abscessed tooth, both of which I've experienced and both of which were the worst pain I've ever felt in my life. I ran to the shower so that water could wash over it while Matt searched the internet to see how to help me. He found that dairy binds to the oils and will stop the burning. I actually knew this, but I wasn't in my right mind to actually do it. I jumped out of the shower and ran to the kitchen and slathered yogurt on my upper lip (which was now burning too) and up my nose. The burning stopped, but I can only imagine how I must have looked.

So, they say that you learn something new every day. Today I learned that I will never touch a jalapeno again. Any takers on the ones left in my fridge?

2 comments:

The Barkers said...

LOL you had the camera for the picture of the peppers...wasn't it still around to take a picture of your face?? haha

Deb Robertson Writes said...

lol! I have mental pictures