*WARNING* The following narrative has been known to cause periods of intense laughter. Proceed with extreme caution!
I was reluctant to post this, but I felt it was my duty to inform others in order that they may avoid a similar situation.
As some of you are aware, my life is oftentimes a textbook example of Murphy’s Law (or a science experiment gone wrong). If there is something that can go awry with whatever it is that I am currently doing, chances are that it will. Often with rather hilarious (and usually painful) consequences for yours truly. Such was the case a couple weeks ago.
As I posted on this blog’s Facebook page, the bounty from this year’s harvest has so far been quite substantial. Included in this bounty were numerous peppers ranging from the delicious bell varieties to the spicy habanero. These however, are not the focus of this tale. Because I hate seeing any seedling go to waste, I took it upon myself to rescue many different types from friends who have a habit of starting a vast multitude in their greenhouse each year. Okay, I need clarify something here, so that there is no female retaliation directed at me. It is actually the male half of this team that goes on a planting spree every year. Now, all of these seedlings are labeled with abbreviations as to their type. Unfortunately, they might as well have been labeled in Egyptian hieroglyphics for all the good they did me. Nevertheless I planted them all. And boy did they produce.
Some were easy to figure out like the jalapenos and pablanos. Others… Well… Not so much. Biting them helps determine their intensity though. Not a recommended method mind you, but a rather adventurous one for those brave souls willing to do it. 😉 Just make sure to have plenty of milk, or better yet, cream, on hand in case that cute little pepper turns out to be a real world example of Satan’s toe. Which by the way happened to me last year when I decided to grow my own ghost peppers after the ones I purchased from the grocery turned out to be lame. But, that’s a story for another day.
This now brings us to the reason for this health alert. Peppers have this little substance in them called capsaicin, which is what gives them their “heat”. The more there is, the “hotter” the pepper. One of the peppers I harvested this year is about the size of a golf ball and has a beautiful red color when fully ripe. This one is mildly spicy, so the amount of capsaicin present is not overly high. However, this does not mean that it is harmless. On the contrary, it can be quite painful under the right circumstances.
Look how sweet and innocent it looks.
It’s well known that I occasionally like to enjoy a beer or two (or three, four, five, etc.) when working in the kitchen. This round of food processing warranted that behavior I felt. Well for those of us in the know, this means that sooner or later you’ll have to give in to nature’s call. After washing my hands I was off to relieve myself. The deed finished and hands washed again it was back to work. I didn’t make it ten feet before it felt like someone put a blowtorch to my crotch! It would seem that capsaicin is not easily removed from your hands. I now understand the reason people wear gloves when handling these things.
With my crotch on fire my mind is racing trying to figure out what to do in order to alleviate the pain. Baking soda. Brilliant! It’s used to counter acidic things. The only problem was that this was not an acidic injury, but rather an alkaline one. Oops. By the way. In case you’re wondering. Baking soda is rather abrasive to soft skin. Realizing my error, I decided to instead counter the pepper’s alkalinity with lime juice…
Yep, you read that correctly.
This literally was one of those “hold my beer I want to try something” moments. This sort of thing happens a lot in my life.
So here we have soft tissue burns incorrectly treated with baking soda, which caused further tissue damage. To then having acidic lime juice applied to burned and abraded tissue. Amazingly I was still able to walk after all that. For the record, I do have an extremely high pain tolerance though. 🙂 After about an hour I was back to normal. Or as normal as I ever am. LOL! And then I wiped my eyes…
So guys. I implore you. With all of my heart I beseech you to take care of your parts by investing in gloves. Lots of them.
P.S. This was not the first time this happened. It was the second. The first time was only mildly irritating. That said, there will not be a third!
Well… Hopefully not anyway.