For as long as I can remember, I have been a lover of spicy foods. Some of my earliest memories of snacking include Pace Picante Sauce, my dad, and Star Trek on Sunday nights. I would patiently wait for my mom and sister to hit the sack, the news to end, and my dad to move toward the kitchen. I knew the time had arrived! I listened intently for the cabinet door to open, the fridge to crack, and the clink of the glass bottle tapping the edge of the bowl. I knew he was pouring some picante and grabbing the tortilla chips for our show. He always brought me a bowl (smaller than his, of course), so I could enjoy a little late night snack that we would have gotten in trouble for otherwise. It was an unspoken agreement; a little "don't ask, don't tell" midnight snack, if you will. I would devour the stuff, onions, peppers, and all, scooping up every last yummy little bite that I could with my chips. Sometimes I even licked the little bowl. (OK, maybe that is an exaggeration. Y'all know by now there's no way I'll lick any sort of bowl...GERMS!)
As I got older, my love for spicy foods continued. I would drag every willing friend I could find to Tran's Oriental Palace for hot and sour soup and spicy fried rice. I went there so often that I didn't even have to tell the waiters what I wanted! Even today when I go to Thai restaurants, I order all dishes at a five for heat. (PS: someone remind me to blog about the Buffalo Chicken Panini's from a couple of months ago that incapacitated my guests. I felt kind of bad for scorching the lining out of their esophaguses, but it tasted good to me!)
Anyway, back to the Ghost Peppers.
One of my husband's friends, Renee, knows that I LOVE all things spicy. A couple of months ago she sent home some peppers...and let me tell you, they were awesome! Sweet, hot, orange and red goodness in a crunchy bite-size package. All for me! I put them in everything! Salads, sauces, pastas. I ate every one of the them. About two weeks ago she sent home some more. They looked very similar to the first batch, only slightly larger and a little more wrinkly. Right after I got the new peppers, I was going to my sister's birthday party. She requested that I cook Corn Dip (it's a gooey amalgamation of cheese, corn, and peppers). I got busy chopping and stirring only to discover that I was out of Jalapeños half way through. I threw in one of Renee's fresh peppers, the first I'd used! I knew it would be a little more spicy than usual because Caribbean Reds are hotter than Jalapeños (and that's what I thought she sent me), but I used about a third of the amount that the recipe typically requires. I finished the dip and hit the road to the birthday party. Everyone arrived at my mom's house (she throws the BEST parties), and the food was served! The food was awesome, as always...Italian beef sandwiches, several dips, chips, veggies. Corn Dip is hard to resist, especially when served with fresh corn chips (Scoops, please!), so everyone dug in. I should have noticed something was up when Matthew backed away from the dip after one taste. My mom even mentioned how spicy it was this time (she typically doesn't mind spicy food)! By the time my cousin's husband made it to the Corn Dip, he shouted, "This is too dang hot. I don't know how y'all are eating this!" He promptly went to the trash can and scraped it off his plate. Now, I'd tasted it by this time, and granted, it was hot. But it certainly wasn't THAT hot. Although slightly unusual, half of the baking dish of Corn Dip was left when the party ended. So I took it home and scarfed it down...not all in one night, but pretty close to. I woke up the next morning with a stomach ache and a horrible case of atomic toots (don't act like you don't know what I'm talking about...they're toots that you hope and pray won't slip out when you're anywhere near another living creature because the stench could singe the hairs right out of their nostrils). I tried my best not to stress out about it, and I'm sure I walked with my cheeks squeezed together for the majority of the day. I blamed it on the massive amount of Italian Beef I ate the evening before since red meat and I don't get along. I never even considered the Corn Dip might be the culprit.
Today started pretty much like any other Sunday: I drank coffee, deep cleaned the house, started laundry, and went for a long-ish run. After I ran several miles, I zoomed back in the house and went right for the kitchen. I was thirsty and starving! I was bound and determined to eat healthy today, all day. I gobbled a banana while I reached in the fridge to grab some turkey, a pretty red pepper, and cilantro to construct a turkey bowl. I was still super hungry, so I bit in to the pepper, just to tide me over until I was finished cooking lunch. And boy, what a mistake that was!! I must have swallowed pretty fast because by the time the burning sensation hit, the pepper was already on its way down. I immediately drank a huge glass of water, thinking it would calm the burn. WRONG. My lips were burning so badly that they tingled...I washed them furiously with kitchen soap! I ran to the bedroom, where Matthew was playing a video game, and told him to kiss me so I could see if the pepper was still on my lips (I thought about telling him to lick my lips, but that would have been weird). It even burned his lips. Second-hand burn, this was bad. Lips blazing, I went back to the kitchen and finished cooking lunch (with the remainder of the pepper, not my smartest move). I got three bites down (probably) before the most intense burn I've ever felt swept through my mouth and nasal passages. Have you ever experienced the too-much-wasabi burn? The burn that takes your breath away for a few seconds? That was happening. I was a fire-breathing dragon! My eyes were watering. My nose was running at the rate that water cascades over Niagara Falls. My lips were numb by this time. Somehow I managed to cough out a request to Matthew to text Renee and ask what kind of peppers she gave me. Ghost Peppers: that was her reply. And at this point, I did exactly the same thing my cousin's husband did to the Corn Dip, I trashed it. I tried futilely to extinguish the burn in my mouth, to no avail. A memory from my teenage years finally surfaced, a time when I suffered from ridiculous stomach ulcers...MILK! Milk would quell the burn. I hate milk, but I chugged a huge amount. Finally, a little relief. I decided lunch was over and headed out to work and run a few errands.
I called my mom on the way to work to tell her what just happened. She was laughing hysterically as I was recounting my lunch experience and explaining what happened with the corn dip. I was trying to laugh along, but somewhere around Don Tyson Parkway, a rumbling hit my upper stomach that resulted in a furious burping episode that I'm too embarrassed to recount. It was bad. Just when I thought things were getting better, I started drooling like a mad man. I'm not talking slightly salivating, I was drooling like a rabid dog! I put a piece of gum in my mouth to try to control the drool, nothing. I put in another to help out the first; nope, didn't do the trick. And then the pain hit, clearly the milk had worn off. My poor stomach. I wheeled in to work like one of the Duke Boys and ran for the bathroom where I gulped down water straight from the faucet. I'm not sure why I drank from the faucet in the bathroom instead of the water fountain...I wasn't thinking logically at this point. All I knew was that my stomach was in major pain! I thought about taking myself to the ER, but I was too humiliated to tell the medical staff what happened. After all, this was just a case of indigestion. I went back to my desk and tried to push through the pain, but I was seriously worried that my co-workers might find me tomorrow morning on the floor, frothing at the mouth, and smelling like atomic toots. Then a sudden wave of nausea washed over me, I was going to call Ralph. And it was going to wind up on my desk if I didn't hurry to the bathroom. I was so sick that I laid down on the bathroom floor with my face pressed to the tile. I bet I laid there for at least 20 minutes. Thank goodness no one came to the door. Covered in floor germs and too exhausted to work, I finally recovered enough to make it to my car in an upright fashion.
It's been seven hours since I ate the Ghost Peppers. And my stomach still hurts. I bet I've drank half a bottle of Pepto Bismol in the hopes that it will settle my stomach. I can't walk upright. I'm worried about what might happen when these peppers make it to the other end of my digestive tract. Something tells me fire poops are in my future.
Ghost Peppers, y'all. They're scary.
