You know, I know the dangers. I am well aware that this may hurt me. I feel like a kid who knows the stove is hot but is compelled to put his fingers into the flame anyway. Hot peppers…love them, they hurt me. So much like life.
I can’t recall what possessed me to grow them in the first place since, well, you can buy perfectly delicious tabasco sauce in the store. I did though, and like most of my “crops,” there wasn’t enough to do much with and so I made this tiny jar of hot pepper oil last year with my entirety of last year’s harvest.
This week I ran across the jar in the back of my refrigerator and opened it thinking I might put it on the pasta I was making. It smelled really delicious. But before I just threw it onto my dinner I had to taste it, a small spoonful of it. It was delicious and was very mild and I thought, Hey! This isn’t so ho… but then before that thought was fully formulated… uh oh, maybe I spoke to soo… As fire ants mounted a full-on assault to the back of my tongue and mouth, and I sank to the floor clutching my throat but masculinely controlling the urge to high-pitch shriek.
There seems to be an unknowable risk to reward ratio with hot peppers. What I need is like a meat thermometer but for the Scoville heat scale. Seems doable.
