Dear blog reader,
You are going to have to read "between the lines" for this post. I don't want to get googled for the wrong reasons, if you know what I mean (or at least you soon will).
Anyways, in the first organic lab of the semester, I go through a fairly extensive safety lecture. Included in that I remind them to wash their hands after every lab. I usually add, quite seriously, that they should be sure to wash their hands BEFORE they use the bathroom. What you may not feel on your hands, WILL be felt by your more sensitive areas. It is usually met with snickers, but the advice is serious albeit a bit humorous.
I need to learn to take my own advice.
I wasn't working in lab- I was making jalapeño poppers at home. My recipe is below, but it involves slitting the peppers and scraping the seeds out. I did this to 10 peppers. Then, in the vernacular of my house, I went potty. I failed to wash my hands before going.
A few minutes later... well, let me just say I wasn't happy with myself. I'm wasn't rolling on the floor in pain, but I was very uncomfortable for several minutes. It reminded me of the old "Ben-Gay in the jockstrap" practical joke. But I wasn't laughing.
After about 30 minutes the pain subsided. I had finished preparing my jalapeño poppers and had started to consume them. Man, were they good. Here's the recipe:
Filling:
4oz cream cheese
a small handful of shredded Montery Jack cheese
6 strips of chopped up and well cooked bacon
several dashes of hot sauce
The peppers are split and the seeds are removed. The peppers are filled with the filling, and then dipped in the following mixture:
1 egg
1 cup flour
enough milk to make the mixture like thin Elmer's glue
The excess is drained off and the peppers are rolled in bread crumbs (I prefer panko crumbs). They are deep fried for 2 minutes. Let cool and enjoy. Follow by a milk of magnesia chaser and loperamide HCl in the morning.
I hope you can learn from my experience. It's a bit embarrassing to tell, but it makes a good story.
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6 comments:
Had a similar experience when I was about eight, except that my EYES were burning.
Since then, somehow I don't like spicy things too much.
Your killing me. Aren't you supposed to drink milk if you eat spicy peppers? Maybe you should have gotten the 2% and started pouring.
Tried something similar some some 6-7 years ago. I had been cleaning chilies and needed to take a leak. Curiously, I made it to school before the tingling sensation began. I decided to return to my dorm room and stand under a cold shower for a while. Still like chilies, but treat them with more respect now.
I was once told by a perspicacious fellow that you can always recognize an organic chemist by the fact that they will wash their hands before using the restroom. While I laughed at the time (I was just a naive undergraduate), this is something that still sticks with me today...
While in grad school, my roomies and I would make chili. Extreme chili. But, we had to let the one guy who didn't wear contacts to mix the final ingredients because one guy forgot to wash and had to actually hike to the lab to use the eyewash to clear the capsaicin out of his eyes.
I too learnt the hard way with chili peppers. My eyes hurt for days afterwards the first time I prepared them, despite washing my hands. So now one of the few times I wear gloves is when I prepare chili peppers.
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