I posted recently about the crock pot chili recipe I devised, and I’m sitting here enjoying the leftovers for lunch as I type. It has a lovely little kick to it, and the only thing that could really be providing that is the multitude of freshly ground black pepper I added. Chili powder doesn’t really have a hot factor, does it? — Debbie
I had lunch at a Mexican restaurant. They brought out homemade chips and two different salsas before our burritos. One was a smokey red salsa, and the other was a green tomatillo salsa. The first bit of the tomatillo salsa hit me like a ton of bricks. The odd thing is, all future bites were less spicy. I must have gotten a big chuck of hot pepper. — Bob Degon
This summer, we got a miniature (ornamental?) hot pepper plant from our CSA Farm. It’s been wintering at my office, and I needed to prune it this week. Being a curious sort of guy, I decided to try one of the peppers to see how hot they were. I mean, they’re ornamental — how hot could they be? Well, let me just say that unless you are a glutton for punishment, you will not pop one of those little ornamental peppers into your mouth. — Keith
Clacked by Debbie McDuffee
on Feb 07, 2009 @ 13:32 EST5EDT
I made a southwest chicken panini for lunch upon which I placed slices of homegrown jalapeno peppers. I’m a real “chilihead”, the kind of person who enjoys eating jalapenos right off the plant, so it wasn’t exactly hot in my book, but it was the hottest thing I’ve had today.
The hottest thing I’ve ever put in my mouth found its way there almost 3 years ago. That was the Summer I grew habanero peppers. After experimenting with habaneros in salsa and a couple of hot sauce batches, I felt brave enough to cut myself a tiny piece off a fresh pepper. The fiery morsel was only about as big as the diameter of a pencil eraser, but that sucker burned me for almost 30 minutes! I shall never do that again. Ever. Well, maybe if I get drunk enough, but otherwise never again.
One tip I got from family in New Mexico for easing the blast of heat from that first bite of spicy food was to eat something oily/fatty/greasy first. You know, eat a few fried tortilla chips plain before diving into that bowl of salsa, or I guess you could just lick a stick of butter. No matter your choice of oil, it really does seem to buffer the initial onslaught of capsicum a bit.