When cleaning a "dry" scrub of lots of baking soda will do wonders on that evil capsaicin before the soap stage. Coat and cover, let sit, brush scrub, sweep into garbage.

Beth Meacham has been known to take a spoonful of the stuff straight, first thing in the morning, to rectify her humours and make her joints stop hurting.

Indeed she does. And while you may use it by the drop, I cook with it. Yum. Are you making more of the orange scented version? I'm nearly out of that. She hinted. It makes a killer spicy orange chicken.

I suppose I could make my own, but you think of much more clever things to put in it.

i'm certain that if i took a spoonful of the stuff straight, my joints would stop hurting. (they do stop hurting after spontaneous combustion, right?)

Neat. And I thought I was the only one to smoke myself out with pepper fumes that way...
What I tend to do with habañeros these days is to tame their fiery character by ethanol extraction, and then use them like their less-puissant cousins.

Wearing lab gloves and glasses, cut 'em open and cut out the ribs and seeds. Discard those seeds and ribs. Slice the pepper bodies into strips, or whatever form you want to end up with.

Then dump 'em into your cocktail shaker. Now, change gloves and add a couple of ounces of water to the shaker. Shake hard and drain; repeat twice. This washes off some of the capsaicin by mechanical action. Repeat, using cheap spirits instead of water: gin, vodka, whatever. You can save the booze (now pepper gin, and hot!) if you like that sort of thing.

Now rinse again with water to get the gin out. Taste the water - carefully - this time. If it's too hot, so are your peppers. You may need to give it a couple more rinses, or another round of gin. The peppers will now have that fruity character, and noteworthy heat, but not the intense pain/danger factor.

Cleanup: I put the shaker into the dishwasher, discard my gloves, and wash my hands twice. Then I lick my fingers to be sure they're not dangerous, and wash 'em again.

Beth, I'm making it if Patrick picks up the oranges I asked for. I should know within a half hour.

I cook regularly with habaneros and bonnet peppers (which are even hotter). I'm very careful about washing my hands and any implements after touching them, but by and large don't find it a problem at all. On the other hand I'm a smoker and a guitarist, so my lungs, throat and fingers probably have sufficient scar tissue to deal with most of the "heat".

Just note that you shouldn't use garlic in this if you plan to keep it any length of time due to a slight but real risk of botulism. Unless, of course, the straining eliminates the risk.

Personally, I'd just gently cook garlic in fresh olive oil on an as-needed basis so I could regulate the garlic and habanero flavors separately.

The orange addition sounds wonderful, though.

This all sounds like great fun, but habaneros are my favorite pepper (perhaps as a result of too much exposure to cheap Cabernet, I really don't care for that "green pepper" thing) and I've developed my own less strenuous method for extracting flavor while avoiding spontaneous combustion.

Viz., simply a) buying one pepper at a time and handling it by the stem), b) putting the whole rinsed pepper in a tea infuser, adding that to the object of my intensification efforts, tasting at frequent intervals and c) fishing out the tea infuser when the flavor seems right.

Adds a whole new dimension to James Beard's oxtail recipe.

I'm liking the idea of infusing cocoa and coriander into it, too. I may try that verison myself. It would make a very interesting addition to Mexican dishes.

Trader Joe's make a habanero and lime salsa that manages to preserve the taste while reducing the heat to a less eye-watering level. The secret ingredient may be carrots.

I once peeled the skin off my hands with a batch of scotch bonnet peppers, having absentmindedly touched the cutting board after taking off the gloves.

Soaking in a mixture of milk and beer does help ease the agony, should one miscalculate.

Beth, my suggested additions are all flavors that go with the fruit-and-smoke thing. I'd use oranges, but not limes; rosemary, but not dill; coriander, but not cilentro.

...He forgot the oranges. Tomorrow, perhaps.

Larry Brennan, I know exactly the problem you're talking about, and it doesn't apply here. I once generated it in my own kitchen, back when I was first in New York. I opened my bottle of olive oil with fresh garlic cloves and suddenly realized the oil was overflowing the mouth of bottle. The garlic cloves had gone bad anaerobically, and were fizzing. I threw the whole thing out. It was a valuable lesson.

None of the flavoring materials remain in the habanero oil once it's finished cooking. You strain all that stuff out. You also very carefully remove any water that's gotten into the oil, because it really will go rancid.

I checked out your link. I have to say, I can't understand all those people who wanted to make up a garlic and olive oil bread-dipping mixture and keep it around forever. That's just wrong. You want fresh bread, fresh olive oil, freshly grated garlic, some salt, and a little snipped fresh basil if you fancy it: a dish scarcely to be improved upon.

Teresa,

Melinda's Hot Sauce which I brought a boxful of bottles back from Belize thirteen years ago only to discover that it was available around the corner, also makes a great habanero/mango combination that is great for a bottled sauce.

Have you ever tried pimenta malagueta from Brazil? I made the mistake of eating one once and using the bathroom without washing my hands.

We grow our own in the greenhouse. I simmer them down in a 1:1 mix of vinegar and sugar. Do not ever gaze/breathe over the vinegar vapours coming from the pot. Season strain bottle. I'm told you can candy them too and that just sounds wierd.

I had a great-uncle who served a mission in South America, and who used to write his letters home after handling hot peppers. Apparently my grandmother and great-grandparents used to open his letters with tongs. (They told this story at his funeral.)

I may want to experiment with this soon--it sounds awesome. I know my boyfriend would enjoy some spicier food now and again.

(Er. That is, experiment with making my own hot pepper oils. Not with writing biohazardous letters. As a beginner, should I start with the less fiery peppers?)

Very cool (I mean, hot). I just got some fresh habañeros at Whole Foods because they looked so good. I'm going back now to get more and try making this. Many thanks.

I don't own a microwave. Any suggestions for a substitute?

Back when I had a habanero plant, I found that roasting them like a bell pepper also cut the heat significantly, and enhanced the fruity/smoky flavor.

I never experimented with them much beyond eating them on toast, though. The plant broke out in aphids, and since it was a dumpster acquisition in the first place, back it went :-(

What makes the olive oil fresh?

I do cook with hot peppers occasionally, but I'm more likely to add it to my plate in a hot sauce. Matouks makes some good ones with scotch bonnets, there's at least one with papaya in it (the west-indian I think, not the one with flames on the bottle) that has a really good taste and mid-to-high level of heat.

No microwave, Josh? Do you have a double boiler? If not, how about a small saucepan and an overhead vent? If not, a small saucepan and an open window? The trick is to get the mixture heated up to the boiling point, but not overcook it. I tend to not use open pots and pans because of the vapor factor, and because my dishwasher has sensitive skin, eyes, sinuses, and sensibilities.

In the winter, if you have a sufficiently old-fashioned radiator or water heater, you could heat the mixture up to the boiling point, slap a lid on it, and set it on top of the radiator or water heater tank for a day or two. I'm more comfortable doing that with mixures that have less water in them than peppers do, but it would take an interesting bug to thrive on habanero peppers in a boiling-hot environment.

If you have a really old-fashioned cooking setup, heat the oil and peppers to the boiling point in a dutch oven, then nestle it down in the coals. If dutch oven thou maist none, heat the mixture in a saucepan, transfer it to a prewarmed crock with a non-airtight lid, and proceed as described.

Beth, I also love hot food as a kind of adjunct "therapy" for my arthritis (though not habanero by the spoonful!) Endorphins, mmmm. Unfortunately my wife can't stand spicy.

Even more unfortunately, at the moment I can't take any more spicy foods, NSAIDs, caffeine, coffee, or alcohol due to an ulcer I'm currently trying to heal from. (I'd prefer to ditch all stress and keep the rest, but that's not gonna happen.) Fortunately I still have the modest pleasure of bitching and grousing about how life is barely worth living without coffee, alcohol, and spicy food.

The thing is, Clifton, that Teresa's habenero oil is tamed. It has a remarkably slow burn. I would never consider putting even a small bit of straight habenero in my mouth.

Scramble eggs in a bit of habenero oil for breakfast. It'll start the day out right for you!

Dear heavens. I don't mind food that bites back, a little, but I draw the line at food that commits assault with intent to maim.

I opened my bottle of olive oil with fresh garlic cloves and suddenly realized the oil was overflowing the mouth of bottle. The garlic cloves had gone bad anaerobically, and were fizzing. I threw the whole thing out. It was a valuable lesson.

I thought I was the only person in the world to have suffered this frightening kitchen mishap. I was in the habit (though laziness) of buying the Costco half-gallon tub of peeled garlic cloves and (because they would otherwise mold before I finished them) covering them with olive oil, then storing in the fridge. Wonderful process, yield peeled garlic forever and a good supply of garlicky oil that's good in everthing.

Until the time I bought the tub, covered it with olive oil, stowed it in my fridge, pulled it out three days later, and heard it.

I had a cheerful profusion of vigorous bubbles, like happy yeast in wort. Only not that.

My jar was going BLURP....BLURP...BLURP. Something was growing in my garlic. Something that needed no oxygen. And would cheerfully multiply while refrigerated.

I figured it might be botulism, and couldn't in any case be good for me. Darnit.

Uh, with all these warnings, I think I'll just stick with buying a few cases of Tabasco sauce to support the Louisiana economy.

Although the idea of a habanero-infused martini does seem deliciously perverse....

No, no. Straight habanero is aggravated assault. Habanero oil is chipped: still hot, but it can't hurt you.

Clifton, my mouth still thinks I'm a chile junkie; the dissenting vote comes from a different organ system. Middle age sucks.

PFiche, I don't see why you should bother making hot oils out of lesser peppers. It's just as messy and inconvenient -- even cutting up fresh jalapenos while not wearing gloves can leave you with a chemical burn, Scoville lightweights though they are -- but the results are much wimpier. Might as well make the real thing.

What I'd love to do is get my hands on half a bushel of rosemary, the way you can do in the Sunbelt. Out here, we pay three to five dollars for a little handful of sprigs. Cramming a jar with fresh rosemary, filling the interstices with top-grade olive oil, heating gently and letting it cool a couple of times, and straining it right after (wet vegetable matter macerating in oil gets nasty fast), will give you a rosemary-flavored oil that'll knock your socks off. Better still, throw some sage, garlic, orange zest, and cracked black pepper into the mix. Makes brilliant roast chicken. All you need is a teaspoon or two of that oil, gently rubbed into the chicken before roasting.

It's a great technology, and once you've got a stash of flavored oils, a lot of very nice dishes become dead easy. I'm surprised more people don't play with it.

Daniel: Yes. Unnerving. And freelance anaerobic processes are seldom good. I know someone whose family lost several members at one go, a couple of generations back, to a novice's canned green beans. It was botulism. They all stopped breathing and died.

I made the mistake of eating one once and using the bathroom without washing my hands.

That sounds even worse than the local idiot who decided to bulk out his codpiece with a pepperoni (\not/ wrapped) before going out on the disco floor.

Awesome. We have a habanero pepper bush that's about to ripen twenty peppers at once, so I'm glad to know you can freeze the suckers. I suspect ours are on the tame side--it's been a hot summer, but Boston isn't really the right climate to get that full heat--but there's still no way I can use them in bulk.

By a lucky coincidence I used half of a habanero, no seeds, in tacos tonight. I hope everyone else already knows that no matter how tough your fingers are, you should never use bare hands to chop a habanero that's going into finger food. (Actually, it's kind of neat: at that point you don't have to put the pepper in the food at all. I do not endorse this delivery mechanism.)

Teresa, would tin foil and a real oven work? i also don't have a microwave, and while i personally can't take hot things (chipotle tends to be too hot for me), i have plenty of friends who love heat. however, because i'm so sizzle-sensitive i'm leery of trying to heat something like this up on the stove.

Duly noted, Teresa.

I noticed my garlic was getting the look of a sixth grade science experiment. Can you actually prolong the freshness by soaking them in olive oil? I like the little Christopher Ranch jars, because they seem to stay the freshest out of the cloves I don't peel myself.

Beth,

"Scramble eggs in a bit of habenero oil for breakfast. It'll start the day out right for you!"

Ummm, that sounds wonderful. I want it now.

(Oh, and I'm sure I've shared this before, but just in case.)

One time, I was at my (very Mormon) parents' house, cooking some vegetarian pasta dish, and looking all over the kitchen for olive oil. My mother is a no-spices-except-salt-and-pepper sort of woman. Her steaks have the sort of chewy consistency that let you chew indefinitely. The ingredients in their household are somewhat lacking, and all I could find was a bucket of Crisco lard, some spray-on Pam, and some generic cooking oil. Eventually, after poking around in the cupboard, I unearth a bottle of olive oil, extra virgin, NEVER BEEN OPENED. And I go to open it, and Mom half-screams from across the room, "What are you going to do with the olive oil?"

I say, "Cook."

And she says, "You can't do that! It's been consecrated."

Note: Mormons believe in blessing people with consecrated oil. The priesthood holders of the church, ie. any male of a certain age, can give blessings, and they carry around little keychain vials with consecrated olive oil. Half the time, it will have been ages since Brother So-and-So gave anybody a requested priesthood blessing, so he'll open up his vial and the olive oil will have gone rancid. Nothing like rancid olive oil being dabbed on your forehead as incentive to get better. So, yeah, in my parents' home, you merely hoard the olive oil in case of emergency. In my home, we use it to cook.

Discussing the cooking merits of olive oil with my mother is ALMOST as much fun as discussing cooking wine.

My own "Beware!" story is calmer than T's — when I was living in the Seattle area I once brought home perhaps half a dozen habas, intending to chop and freeze them. I had sliced them open on the cutting board but hadn't gotten any further when my stepdaughter came to the door of the kitchen, easily a dozen feet away, and choked. She couldn't even get into the room.

Someone said in an earlier comment that bonnets were hotter than habaneros. None of my references agrees with that. The difference isn't huge, but habas are generally listed as being slightly ahead. (Bonnets also have a distinctly different flavor and aroma, which I am not particularly fond of, but that's another story.)

Most of my info, btw, indicates that a regular habanero will probably clock in at 75K to maybe 150K Scovilles, assuming that it was grown under the correct conditions; it's only the fancy cultivars that get insanely higher, with 'Red Savina' maxing out at 577K if I recall correctly, and something called 'Francisca' not far behind it. Near as I recall, though, from what I've read, only occasional fruits are higher than about 350K Scovilles.

Then there was the claim, a couple years back, about a chilli from India (which is why I've used the variant spelling) that supposedly went as high as 855K Scovilles; but I've never seen it substantiated. I think it was stated to be some sort of _C._frutescens_ var, but that's hazy memory, so don't quote me.

Just by the bye, I'm currently growing 'Aji Dulce de Puerto Rico', one of at least 4 entirely nonhot habanero vars. (Why, you ask? Because it lets me adjust flavor and heat independently. More parameters! More degrees of freedom!)

jon

PS: T, are you putting Grains of Paradise into the oil you're doing up for Beth?

Teresa: I can get a large quanitity of rosemary for you. It grows as a weed. The only trick is to ship it, and an overnight box (while not a half-bushel) might let you infuse a fair bit of oil.

It is plentiful enough that I use large quantities of fresh rosemary on the barbeque to make smoke to flavor roasting meats.

My first wife, in utter innocence, bought some Scotch Bonnet (Jamaican for 'habanero') peppers at a market in Kingston, Jamaica, thinking they were sweet peppers. She cut one up and ate it with cheese and a cracker.

She then put her mouth directly to the tap and tried womanfully to drink Kingston's entire water supply. When I got home I told her to try rum, in which the oils were soluble (and that did help a bit). She was aggrieved when I wouldn't kiss her for two days (since kissing her cause my lips to blister).

Teresa, "My mouth still thinks I'm a chile junkie; the dissenting vote comes from a different organ system." belongs on shirts, mugs and other paraphernalia. Truer words. . .

I grew some Red Savina once (the Francisca is supposed to be able to get hotter, but it's the same guy who did Red Savina, and the morph isn't quite what wanted).

Anyhoo, they got big (they can be as big as softball, these were the size of ancho). I gave some to a friend (who loved the set I pickled for him in champagne vinegar, he ate them as I eat olives). He roasted them and said they were tasty, but not much spicier than a bell.

Red Savina is, so I've read, very prone to not coming up hot at all, but the test is in the eating.

I grow habs, and bonnets, because I think them lovely; and tasty when used sparingly. This means I will, when this year's crop ripens, have to play with some oil.

My sister loves jalapeños and will occasionaly pop a fresh one in her mouth to eat. She once tried that with an habañero. Once. I don't know what she did to try to cool it down--milk? cottage cheese?

Teresa, that recipe sounds very much like Piri-piri, which my sister-in-law brought back from Portugal. It's very good.

The main difference between that recipe and yours is that Piri-piri is not heated and some of the oil is replace with whiskey.

Oh, and supposedly the best thing to cut the burning hot oil of hot peppers is dairy--milk, yogurt, that sort of thing.

A good source for unusual/obscure varieties of chiles is Native Seeds, one of various organizations working to preserve genetic diversity and variety in seed stocks.

Habaneros work great in salsa. My variation involves mango, oranges, and carrots. It has a nice heat that sneaks up without being overwhelming.

Maybe that's just me, as I use two habaneros, chopped and handled with bare hands. Sometimes a serrano or two will go in as well.

I am curious as to the severe reactions others have had in response to peppers from hell. I don't have any skin reactions other than stinging if it involves a nose or an eye, or burning lungs if I happen to cook with habaneros and the capsaicin goes up in smoke.

In the meantime, if you want to think of something painful, imagine this from the September issue of the journal Pain, "Migraine prevalence within ethnic populations is varied. Capsaicin injection to the forehead of healthy volunteers induces the state of an experimental trigeminal sensitization, which is one of the proposed mechanisms of migraine."

Ouch.

Re touching chilies and dealing with the aftermath: When treating so-called "Hunan hand" in the emergency room, the treatment of choice is a weak bleach solution (approx. 1 tablespoon to a liter of water). Soak your hands in it briefly. The chlorine in the bleach breaks the capsaicin molecule and renders it non-hot. The pain stops immediately.

For those who get the stuff in their eyes (or for gentlemen, somewhere else they, uh, shouldn't have touched before soaking their hands in bleach...), the specific treatment is contact lens wetting solution. This also breaks the molecule.

Meanwhile, if anyone needs the Genuine Medically Approved Hiccup Cure, I've got that too. :)

Oh, I forgot. Re garlic in olive oil: The remedy would seem to be parboiling/blanching the garlic for 5-10 minutes. The boiling seems to do the trick. I've never had one of those "runaway" reactions with my preparations...but then I tend not to keep them long, either. They get eaten.

Sigh. One of the reasons I think I'm endorphin deficient is that I can't eat hot things. There's no flavor, no rush, just really unpleasant pain. And that's jalapenos. Indian food is a different story though: different spices and peppers.

My father liked Tobasco sauce so much I once gave him a gallon jar of it for Father's day. (Bought in New Orleans, sigh.) For some reason everyone seemed to find this hilarious.

MKK

I hope this stuff doesn't count as "Weapons of Mass Destruction", but evacuating the apartment while the fumes clear, blistering skin, and other such stuff, sounds awfully close.

Maybe that's just me, as I use two habaneros, chopped and handled with bare hands. Sometimes a serrano or two will go in as well.

I've got a couple of Asian dishes that I use habaneros in -- they're literally 20 cents apiece at the local farmer's market, so why not? -- and I too am a bare fister. Ditto jalapenos and serranos. Works just fine too as long as I remember to 1) scour the cutting board with detergent ASAP, 2) scrub the knife with detergent ASAP and 3) remember not to put my fingers in my eye. Yeah, that more than kinda sucked.

[I'm guessing these are fairly low Scoville though, probably in the 50k - 100k range, so I can get away with it. The truly thermonuclear ones I wouldn't even dare look out without wearing shades.]

I have a question about the recipe, though:

When the oil is satisfactorily flavored, dump everything out into a strainer. While it’s draining, wash and dry your jar.

Draining into what? I only see one vessel listed amongst the equipment. I assume one can simply use a second, surrogate jar?

Speaking of garlic oils and whatnot: I do a variation on Jamie Oliver's Focaccia with Rosemary and Olive Oil where I basically premake the garlic-and-rosemary olive oil (since I lack fresh rosemary and a proper mortar in which to bash the garlic). Mince up the garlic as fine as possible, break up the rosemary as small as reasonably possible, put both garlic and rosemary into small glass jar (I use a sterilized caper vial) and let sit in the fridge for about a day or two. Then simply pour out the oil as appropriate for the foccaccia, garlic and rosemary and all. If timed right, the rosemary softens just enough to get crisp when cooked (as opposed to toothpicky) and the garlic merely browns instead of carbonizing, resulting in a really lovely infusion throughout the bread.

Oh, and a "light scattering of sea salt" ain't nearly enough. I use a fistful of kosher salt (at least) to ensure that every bite gets at least a little saline piquancy. Without it, the foccaccia tends to be a little, well, dull and faux-cakelike; with it, it's an absolute delight.

A Sicilian woman I met during a Junior Year Abroad program in Italy shared a wonderful anti-hot measure: bread and honey, which I am guessing provides a mechanical scrub off of the tongue and mouth-parts. Works a treat.

For rijsttafel, Indonesians serve seroendeng as a side-dish, a combination of lightly roasted flaked coconut, peanuts, sugar and a touch of trassi or ground dried shrimp paste. The dish works as another mechanical scrub complimenting the variety of hot dishes on the table. (Including "killer egg" from the Dutch Worldcon.)

Crazy(ooh, but brave enough to try the flavored oil thing? So-o-o-o-o tempted!)Soph

Works just fine too as long as I remember to 1) scour the cutting board with detergent ASAP, 2) scrub the knife with detergent ASAP and 3) remember not to put my fingers in my eye. Yeah, that more than kinda sucked.

That happened to me once, and like an idiot I stuck my head under the cold tap, which of course made it worse. I then realised that I was not going to be able to get my eye open in order to put buffered eyedrops in, because every muscle in my head was clenching in some way.

My husband heard the howling and I had to tell him "Jeff, I need you to pin my arms down by my sides, force open my left eyelid, and pour eyedrops in, because my body is not cooperating. Please, NOW!"

Here in Prague, Jeff and I have a fun game that I call Magyar Roulette. Czech farmers and market stallholders have a habit of mixing up batches of pointy pale-green bell peppers, so while taking peppers from the crate, you'll get a mild sweet pepper, and then a really hot Hungarian-style one - not as hot as a habanero, but definitely as hot as those little Thai peppers, and big. I am quite the chili-head, but I've lost a lot of Magyar Roulette lately and it's not that fun. Enormous chunks of raw hot pepper in a salad (nothing oily or starchy, so the capsaicin has nowhere to go but my tongue) just aren't all that pleasant, so now we cut a small sample to taste from every pepper before using it. The live ones are great in rogan josh or pörkölt.

Tiny potent chili peppers grow wild in the backyards of Hawai'i. I think they're actually Tabasco peppers, imported either by Don Francisco de Paula Marin, a Spaniard who was King Kamehameha I's personal physician and a noted island horticulturalist, or by Mexican vaqueros brought in to teach Hawaiians how to wrangle cows. Folks use them to make chili pepper water, a water-based pepper sauce with vinegar, salt, and garlic. My mouth is watering now.

Randy: I'm glad I'm not the only one who has made the mistake of cutting habaneros without gloves and then using the bathroom. Perhaps we should start a club. There must be more idiots like us out there.

Everyone, don't try this at home.

My brother has worn hard contact lenses for many, many years, and treats them very casually. He has been known to pop one in his mouth to clean it.

Do not try that after eating chilis, or at least do not put it back in your eye afterwards. It takes some time just to get the affected eye to open so you can get the lens out.

Um. I'm a supertaster, so I was wincing just *reading* this thread. The only way I'm ever coming in contact with this recipe is to point one of my chilehead friends at it, then take about two drops of the result and stir it into a litre of olive oil. Prior experience suggests that this is about the dilution rate needed to provide me with a similar experience to theirs rather than agonising pain.

On the other hand, the rosemary bushes are due for a haircut when I get home, and I now know how to make ginger-infused oil without it turning dubious. I'm glad I did read the thread. :-)

TNH: No microwave, Josh? Do you have a double boiler? If not, how about a small saucepan and an overhead vent? If not, a small saucepan and an open window?

Alternately, this is the time to make your outdoor grill earn its keep.

For those who like to grow their own, Pepper Joe's has a nice selection of pepper seeds, from hot to volcanic.

Mm. Somebody mentioned Matouk's; it is indeed awfully nice, though incendiary. And can be used in place of red chili paste to improvise Thai hot and sour soup.

A very nice home-made hot sauce can be made by soaking ancho, habanero, bird, and black peppers in a combination of heated cider vinegar and a dash of balsamic vinegar, with some salt, rosemary, and as much fresh garlic as the trade will stand. This does not generally go bad if refrigerated, and yields some of the very nicest pickled garlic you'd ever care to thwart romantic advances with.

Yum.

On the subject of food that fizzes and bubbles: this year we made some salt-pickled kosher garlic dill gherkins.

They are really good (and the process seems so magical - lactic acid bacteria are great little beasts) but the very slight effervescence when I bit into the first fruits of our labours was a bit of a surprise.

Actually, Teresa, I can think of a good reason to make lesser-heat pepper oil: the taste. Habaneros are good, yes, but they are distinctly different in taste from, say, serranos. (Or jalapeños, for that matter.)

Your recipe definitely sounds good, and I may have to try it. Cooking with infused oil would probably be lovely.

Also, I agree: goggles are a good idea, lest you inadvertantly wipe your hand against your face and send yourself to a hospital. I've gotten pepper juice (not, thankfully, habanero) in my eyes, and OW OW OW OW OW OW.

I love habanero season. I am one of the crazies that will just slice one up and dice it raw into whatever sounds good at the moment. That, and this year I planted some hybrid jalapeno plants named 'Mucho Nacho'. Very big, very good, slight burn.

One time at a chili/salsa/margarita party I went to, one of the younger guys was chopping habañeros, and a fragment of one flew up and struck him in the eye. They rushed him to the ER. He kept the vision in the eye, thanks be to Aesklapios.

Um...I'm hesitant to even ask this, but...'chili', the pepper or dish, 'Chile', the country, 'chilly', the state of being someone uncomfortably cold, right? If so, the t-shirt proposed above needs a slight correction.

Marie Sharpe's (Sharp's?) is another good habanero sauce from Belize. it's made with carrots, i think, and a really nice flavor - nothing at all like your typical all-vinegar Tabasco-style sauce. this is sweet and hot and yummy.

i made some corn relish last weekend, and threw in a couple of minced habaneros, as i usually do. but these particular peppers were far hotter than anything i'd come across before. on tasting, my wife determined that the two peppers were far too much for the two bags of frozen corn to dilute - it was too hot to eat, especially since one of the people eating it was a breat-feeding mom. so i ended up picking a lot of the little pepper bits out before i served it.

and then i dumped the pepper tops, all the extra pieces i'd picked out, and some onion, into the garbage disposal and ... whizzz... instant pepper spray. so, that sucked for a while. then a few hours later, i accidentally rubbed my eye... and then it burned for a bit and started to go numb, along with my eyelids and part of my cheek. my wife had to stand over me as i writhed on the bed to put saline drops in my eye to flush it out.

evil little critters...

One of my former co-workers brough in some very small very hot peppers one time. I ate one, minus seeds. Twenty minutes later, after my mouth quit telling me about it....

We were able to get the message to my then-boss before she put half a dozen in her guacamole. I think that would have qualified it as an incendiary device.

I saved the seed form as many fo those peppers as I could get hold of. Very small plant (about 12 inches tall), and the largest fruits are a half-inch long: most have only two or three seeds. I call it "Greg's Killer Pepper".

Actually, Teresa, I can think of a good reason to make lesser-heat pepper oil: the taste.

Seconded. To me, habaneros taste like the base for cheap Liquid Smoke knock-offs. The flavor overwhelms the heat.

My mother once bought dried liniment peppers, mistaking them for chilies.

The resulting gallon batch of chili con carne was frozen solid and sawn into eighths, on the grounds that each eighth could flavour its own large batch, and all would be well.

The unfortunate result was stuff still much, much too hot to eat.

I don't think this is why I'm a complete spice wimp, but it might have contributed.

Meanwhile, if anyone needs the Genuine Medically Approved Hiccup Cure, I've got that too.

Yes, please!

my employer sponsored a little lunch-time Fear Factor-esque contest a few years ago. one of the stages was a habanero-eating contest. two of the contestants ate two whole habaneros... the other contestant was afraid to try even one.

P J Evans: I saved the seed form as many fo those peppers as I could get hold of. Very small plant (about 12 inches tall), and the largest fruits are a half-inch long: most have only two or three seeds. I call it "Greg's Killer Pepper".

P J, did the plants come true from seed? I'm curious to know if the hottest peppers are hybrids or open pollinated.

P J, did the plants come true from seed? I'm curious to know if the hottest peppers are hybrids or open pollinated.

These are open pollinated - the ones I've picked so far smell hot, but I haven't tasted them. I'm growing them for the seeds, mostly; I think one or two fruits would be sufficient for a gallon of chili. (One thing about the small size: they dry really fast.)

Once I ate guacamole into which a small piece of jalapeno had snuck. The guac was not particularly hot but biting into that piece of pepper made half of my mouth go numb (even though I spat it out immediately). The Texan friends I was visiting had a big ole laugh about that.

Is heat tolerance a genetic thing, or can it be acquired?

Speaking of hot sauce, Decision Procedure For Hot Sauce Quality. Includes:

2. Is the second ingredient some kind of vegetable matter?

"Why do you have this rule?", you might ask. "What non-member of the vegetable kingdom could possibly be the second ingredient of a hot sauce? Venison? Drywall? The set of all natural numbers?". No, I refer to that scourge of this decision procedure: vinegar. If the second ingredient of your hot sauce is vinegar, this means you have what we in the business call "a vinegar-based hot sauce", which is no good. Most hot sauces I've seen are vinegar-based, for some reason I cannot comprehend, so you need to be careful about this.

Now, some of you may like vinegar-based hot sauces, and at this point you are probably seething with vinegary rage. "You'll get my vinegar-based hot sauce when you pry it from my cold dead hands!", you might be saying. Well, THAT'S JUST FINE, because NOBODY WANTS your lousy vinegar-based hot sauce, and if we did we could just BUY SOME FROM THE STORE, so stop being so touchy.

It is okay for vinegar to show up later in the ingredient list. All hot sauces I've seen contain some vinegar. If you like incredibly hot sauces there might be no hope for you but to go with a vinegar-based sauce.

Diane Duane, you're a benefactor of humankind. Is there a preferred way to break the capsaicin molecule if you're female and your sweetie has, like Greg Horn, handled extremely hot peppers with his or her bare hands?

There are Puerto-Rican style hot sauces (like the one I make) that are, in fact, vinegar infused with chile peppers. They taste nothing like tabasco.

PJ, those sound like bird peppers, which I think are very similar to piquin peppers, and which you can get through Penzey's. Itty bitty cone shaped red suckers?

Mmm.

Yes, use sparingly. *g*

They're not as big as the chiles pequines that I've see - the largest of the killers are about the same as the smallest pequines. The plant is much smaller; it should be a good potted plant. (Peter Piper picked a peck of potted peppers, and regretted it later, as they were chiles?)

Yes, very small, red, conical. Pepper Joe's has something similar, from the description.

Would the enzymes from a good meat tenderizer work to break down the capsaicin molecules?

PJ, those sound very like the peppers here in Hawaii which Eric Sadoyama described - tiny, conical, bright red when ripe, growing on small plants a foot or two high. I've heard them called Devil Tongues, also called Bird Peppers. I've also heard them called Thai Peppers, and I know there are in fact some tiny very hot Thai peppers; I gather local Thais and Vietnamese think the local peppers are OK substitutes for what they're used to. I have no idea if any of these names are correct.

BTW, birds can eat "bird peppers" and other extremely hot varieties unscathed because they don't have a nerve receptor for capsaicin.

I just noticed the Safeway here has orange habaneros; dunno how hot they are. Hmmm....

That would make sense - Greg's wife is Vietnamese.

I've heard of bird peppers, but have never seen birds eating them. There is a story that wolves/coyotes don't eat people who eat lots of chiles, because the people are then hot, in the non-radioactive sense, and the canids don't enjoy the flavor. I have no idea if this is true.

"I have no idea if this is true."

I think a wolf or coyote would have to be pretty desperate and pretty hungry to overcome its native fear of humans enough to venture a nibble, but if my plans to become an Evil Genius every come to fruition*, I'll find out for you.

Note to Self: Develop regimen for feeding chilis to captured secret agents.

* The price of island lairs is prohibitive these days. I hope to hell its a bubble market.

Everytime I revisit this thread, I'm reminded of the scene at the end of Project A, Part II in which Jackie Chan stuffs two fistfuls of hot peppers in his mouth, chews them and spits them onto his hands, turning his fists into chemical weapons.

The outtakes at the end of the movie showed that he had, in fact, chewed real hot peppers.

Long time lurker, but devoted reader here.

Teresa, are you sure you won't consider a cookbook of some sorts? I live alone (sadly), and don't really cook much, but everytime I read this page it makes me want to whip up fabulous dinner parties based only on recipes gleaned from your site.

You can call it, simply, "Making Food."

David,

It wasn't habaneros, it was one malagueta that I merely ate and left some stray juice on my fingertips.

Aiyy Yi Yi!

Is heat tolerance a genetic thing, or can it be acquired?

I have read that chiliheads burn out their tastebuds, so they need more and more heat because it's all they can taste. Unclear whether this was accurate or someone who hated heat.

Would the enzymes from a good meat tenderizer work to break down the capsaicin molecules?

All of the capsaicins in Wikipedia have the same HN-C=O bond as in protein chains, so it's possible tenderizers would affect them. However, tenderizers work by hydrolisis; I wouldn't expect them to be as effective on something that dissolves in oil and not water. I also have no idea how nasty the breakdown products would be.

Teresa, I don't know if it's the best method, but a bathtub full of tepid, soapy water served to relieve the agony one Philcon when my sweetie had consumed habaneros (in chocolate) at a Hot Foods Party.

Important safety note: Toothpaste does not remove 100% of the capsaicin from the mouth of one who has recently consumed habaneros.

Another vote here for the Medically Approved Hiccup Cure....

Jon Singer, you've got the nose and no mistake. I adore you. You can take a list like "olive oil, habanero chiles, rosemary, orange zest, coarse black pepper, garlic, ground coriander, and powdered cocoa, plus maybe a microfraction of cinnamon and an infinitesimon of allspice" -- which you have to admit is a damned artful selection -- and see that the missing ingredient is grains of paradise. I'd been working my way toward that spot in food-cyberspace, but you teleported.

(I got a little giddy and added some Scharfenberger Nibs. The oil's smelling good.)

I console myself with the reflection that I woofed you when I made that Summer 2000 liqueur by using both rose geranium leaves and Stanwell Perpetual petals. You remember that mix: vodka, basil, rose geranium, lemon verbena, Stan the Perp, citrus peel, peppercorns of several colors, coriander, honey, quince jelly (mine), a tweedle of salt, and enough simple syrup to bring it right. It got real good. It's nearly gone now: two fingers of Old Overholt, a dash of Summer 2000, and some fresh mint. Serve over ice.

Was that rumored-hotter-than-Savinas pepper the Naga Jolokia? I've heard about its rumored 855K Scoville rating -- achieved once, by one lab, and much disputed since.

Cmikk, how can a habanero chile plant come up with aphids? A habanero chile mooshed in water with a little dash of detergent to make it stick to the leaves is what you use to get rid of aphids.

Chip, I'm fairly amazed by the story of the guy who put a pepperoni in his shorts to go dancing. I can't imagine getting romantic about a guy whose tallywhacker leaves grease stains. Did he come up with spice burns?

Risa, if chipotles are too hot for you, don't mess with habaneros, foil, and ovens. Get a bottle of good hot sauce and serve that to your friends when they come over.

PFiche, if you told me the story of your mother and the consecrated olive oil, I don't remember it, and should think I would. This raises all sorts of possibilities. Say someone's cooking in the kitchen who doesn't know it's consecrated, and uses it to make mayonnaise, and then after that there's an accident or serious illness, and nobody brought straight olive oil with them. Could you anoint the prayed-over sufferer with the mayonnaise? Let's say that's okay. So, then, could you do it if you'd put a packet of Ranch Dressing Mix into the mayonnaise? Would you have to throw the rest of the salad dressing out after you used it for the anointing? Would it make a difference in the spiritual status of the salad dressing if the person who made it knew the oil was consecrated?

I know how this line of questioning ends. Same way it always does: I get told I'm having too much fun.

Terry Karney, let me know when you're ready to prune your prostrate rosemary, and I'll be standing at this end with a catcher's mitt. Claire Eddy will think you're wonderful.

Harry, I'll confirm that dairy products are a good way to counteract pepper burns. High butterfat content helps.

This piri-piri stuff sounds interesting. What do you do with it?

Greg Horn, I'll accept that you can handle habaneros with your bare skin. I can do the same with poison ivy. Normal people shouldn't try to do either.

Crazysoph, I can believe bread and honey works. Plain bread's middling good for that all by itself, and honey has all sorts of interesting properties.

Xopher, I can only speak for usage as I learned it. Chile is a country. A chile, or several chiles, are little hot fruits in the tomato-potato-eggplant family. They're also called peppers. If you call them peppers, you use English syntax: jalapeño peppers, habanero peppers, etc. If you call them them chiles, you may if you wish use Spanish syntax: chiles habaneros, chiles anchos, etc. Chile colorado and chile verde are entrees, and I wish I had some right now. Chili, esp. chili con carne, is a meat-and-bean stew invented by gringos. Chili peppers, chilis, etc., is what you call chiles if you're a Norteño and/or don't know any better. Chilly is the diminutive of cold. Chilli is how you spell chile/chili if you hail from the current or former possessions of the British Empire.

P J Evans, what color were these peppers? Sounds like they might be bird peppers. If so, they're in the 100K - 225k Scoville range, mighty and dreadful.

Mary Dell, chile tolerance can be learned, but some learn a lot faster than others, and some never do get the hang of it. You'll have noticed that some of the people in this conversation have a natural tolerance. I believe that's partly hereditary. Jim Macdonald can happily scarf down
my hottest habanero oil, but his sweet maidenly younger daughter, who looks like an illustration off an old-fashioned chocolate box, can put away peppers that would make a dragon breathe fire.

Sumana, I make vinegar-based hot sauces, and that's still funny.

Dianne O'Mara, I've occasionally thought about gathering up all my recipes, but I'd have to go back and find them. I've been posting recipes online for ... what, a decade and a half now? They're all over the place.

Rikibeth, that hurts just to think about.

"Greg's Killer Pepper" sounds like it's probably one of the "ornamental" peppers usually sold for growing as a colorful decorative plant.

But a lot of those plants -are- edible. You just have to be able to tolerate extremely -- EXTREMELY -- hot peppers.

I repeat it often as a cautionary tale.

A former housemate had the warning repeated back to her, by a third party, and was able to tell the cautioner that she knew the original victim.

So at least I got some amusement from it.

Greg Horn - my oldest son, Kit, is eligible for this study, Capsaicin to Control Pain Following Third Molar Extraction.

This study will test the effectiveness of the drug capsaicin in controlling pain after third molar (wisdom tooth) extraction. Capsaicin, the ingredient in chili peppers that makes them "hot," belongs to a class of drugs called vanilloids, which have been found to temporarily inactivate pain-sensing nerves. If capsaicin alleviates pain in dental surgery, it may have potential for use in many types of surgery and painful illnesses.

He went in for the initial eval and was supposed to have the extraction done but we had trouble finding someone who could give him a ride home after surgery. If he ends up getting this done I'll let you know how it works if you are interested. I think it's fascinating but kind of scary. It seems like a "fight fire with fire" theory of pain relief to me.

Apparently capsaicin is strong enough stuff that it can actually ressurect dead nerves in the nose and return the sense of smell to people who had permanently lost it.

http://www.sinusbuster.com/smell.html

Wow, this is cool stuff! Soon as I saw the initial post I said "I know where I'm going to get those!" Tuesday is Farmer's Market day in Hoboken...I went and bought two quarts of them. They are a startling Day-Glo orange color.

There was this woman there with her little girl (about 3, I thought). The little girl was exploring, handling the "salsa kit" peppers, the bell peppers...working her way down to the habañeros. I said "excuse me..." and the mother went O my God you're right.

Diane Duane: that's great information, thank you. I think I'll make a bucket of that bleach solution and have it ready before I take the hobbies out of the freezer. Wouldn't hurt to set out the big bottle of contact lens solution (which I have anyway) in the bathroom.

Teresa: what about lemon peel? It seems more like orange than lime, but I'm not sure. And you are the queen of all citrus peel knowledge, to put it mildly. Should I put in some lemon peel? What about tangerine (ooo, or even clementines!)?

Teresa,

I have a collection of links that lead to recipies from the Making Light blog, including some in the Open threads. I was planning on printing them out for reference, once the threads were closed.

I wouldn't mind doing some of the googling for you and looking around other websites, etc., if you did decide to compile a book.

Please let me know if you want my collection of links.
(The email address looks anonymous, but I do check it weekly.)

Regarding hiccups:

Take one teaspoon of sugar and put it on your tongue. Close your mouth firmly. Do not open your mouth again until the sugar has _completely_ dissolved. Your hiccups will be gone.

I suspect that this works because be keeping your mouth so firmly shut you are breaking the rhythm of the hiccups. However, I have been assured that the sugar has some chemical properties that make it more effective than just keeping your mouth shut.

Teresa - I'd say the best way to go is to irrigate the affected area with contact lens wetting solution. Should do the trick.

And afterwards whack the other party around a little with wet noodles or whatever more emphatic tool/s you prefer to make sure they _don't do it again._ (Sheesh.) (Grin.)

I've tried making a lemon and lime sorbet with chopped up bits of a big chile pepper (you let the chile, lemon rind, and lime rind simmer in the mixture to get a good infusion before cooling it and putting into the ice cream churner). it's very refreshing, with a little kick.

another interesting dish we do is to remove the seeds from the big chiles (I really wish I knew exactly what they're called), put a strip of cheese in, cover it with dumpling or wanton wrapper, then fry. makes for tasty little appetizers.

ooh ooh yes please, I second (or third) the request for a recipe book! though since I live on the opposite end of the world, sometimes the ingredients teresa uses are barely even recognizable to me...

p.s. what's the difference between cilantro and coriander? around here we call it wansoy but I don't know which one that is... wansoy... yum...

How does one ship rosemary? It stays fresh with no care at all for days after it's picked. And around here, rosemary is one of the chief "maintenance-free" landscaping plants -- except it easily outgrows the spot you set it in. I'm thinking it would be a kindness to all involved to ship bushels of it to people who live in those cold and unforgiving places where rosemary does not thrive.

My own rosemary is almost thirty years old, but what's doing it in is that the plum tree has overshadowed it completely. I need to plant a new one in a spot that nothing will overgrow (hmm, next to the ceanothus and the lavender, yes)

what's the difference between cilantro and coriander?

Usually the leaves are called cilantro and the seeds are called coriander, but it's the same plant.

A lot of people don't like the flavor of cilantro. (It's a fairly common ingredient in salsa; the local burrito place asks if you like it before filling the tortilla.)

Capsaicin as pain-killer:
I still have a tube of a topical ointment for arthritis pain called Zostrix, active ingredient 0.075% capsaicin. It provides a very mild "burn" sensation on normal skin; I tried it on my knuckles for a while when my arthritis was new and very bad. Of course you have to be very careful handling it, to get it only on the desired area and then cover it (I was taping my knuckles in those days) so you don't end up getting it in your eyes or other sensitive parts.

It did reduce the pain to some extent, but not very well. Would stronger doses work better as a topical? I'm not sure. It may work on the "scratching an itch" principle - small nerve sensations over a broader area will drown out or partially mask intense pain sensations concentrated in one point. All to do with how our brains are wired up.

A friend of mine - in Massachusetts - has a large rosemary growing in a pot. It has outgrown several pots by now, in fact. She keeps it on the porch and brings it inside in the summer.

So colder climates are not necessarily detrimental to rosemary, although I would love to live in a place where it grows like a weed.

Oops, I meant winter, not summer.

Hi hi.

I am abashed. G of P just seemed ...well, _right_. You know.

[I haven't been able to read through the entire comment stack in detail, so the following may replicate something that someone else has suggested; if so, please accept my apologies.]

It occurs to me that Tecnu [tm], which cuts through the oily resin of poison ivy, might be just the thing for removing chile oleoresins as well, and/or for protecting one's hands under the gloves or if one cannot find gloves. I have not tried this, so it remains merely a conjecture for the moment. (Let us not get into "just a theory" here -- I am too angry about people who think that common speech is the same thing as scientific terminology, and who want to dumb us all down to that level, to be coherent on the subject.) I actually have some Tecnu, and the local groceries have Habaneros, so I may just make a test. If I do, I'll report results here.

Cheers --
jon

Oh, I forgot — yes, Naga Jolokia. Would like to see either confirmation (and seeds for sale) or denial, but there doesn't seem to be any firm word one way or the other.

Sigh...
jon

Re the hiccup cure:

(I could have sworn I wrote this down somewhere else online, but can I find it now? Nooooo. Oh well, never mind.)

...Backstory:

Hiccups are the result of a blood serum electrolyte balance. The causes are various: talking too much while eating (my favorite), eating or drinking too fast, etc etc, whatever. Different causes tend to induce different kinds of imbalance. The imbalances are these:

(a) Respiratory acidosis -- too much CO2 in the blood.

(b) Respiratory alkalosis -- too little CO2 in the blood.

When you get one or the other of these, the body's tendency is to try to rectify the situation by pushing the lungs' contents in and out a lot faster, so that if there isn't enough CO2, some more can get into the bloodstream, and if there's too much, some can get out. Now, the body doesn't want to bother your conscious mind about this, so it does it in a simple, inelegant, and not wildly effective way: it makes your diaphragm spasm, compressing the lungs and shoving most of their tidal volume out with each spasm. This is the hiccup.

Now, you'd think that concentrating on breathing deeply and regularly, and ventilating yourself in a thoughtful manner, would put this problem right. Well, probably it will: but it takes forever, and you're sitting there hiccuping and feeling like a fool (and the continuing hiccups can themselves make the electrolyte situation worse). So it becomes time to take drastic measures.

It turns out that the smartest and fastest way to derail the hiccups themselves is to quickly *increase* the imbalance significantly. The intervention derived from this concept deals with (first) the most common one, the acidosis, and then, if that doesn't work, the less common one, the alkalosis. The fortunate thing is that all the raw materials are usually present in the average bar or restaurant, so you can cure yourself or a friend fast in one of the places where you're most likely to look like an idiot as you just sit there hiccuping and hiccuping.

(Part 1:) Juli got this one right. Take a large spoonful of sugar, dry, in the mouth, and let it dissolve. Some of the sugar gets absorbed directly through the buccal membrane of the mouth. The acidosis is kicked way further along, and your body, distracted by the sudden extreme change in the blood chemistry, "calls off" the hiccups as ineffective. It calls them off right away, too: within seconds. The "spoonful of sugar" approach, in my experience, works for about 60% of hiccuppers.

If this doesn't work, the hiccuper has a worse case of acidosis than mere sugar can deal with. So we take the intervention up a notch.

(Part 2:) Take one small spoonful of salt (the equivalent of a cooking teaspoon is plenty). Again, hold in the mouth and let it dissolve. It's gross, but in the next 20% of hiccupers, the hiccups will stop. Bang, right away.

If neither of these steps work, then your hiccuper is not in acidosis, but in alkalosis. So you switch tactics.

(Part 3:) Give the hiccuper a lemon slice and tell them to chew on it. Their hiccups will then vanish.

It is important to do these things *in order* and not try to cut back on the amounts of sugar and salt, or the intervention may fail and you'll wind up having to do it all over again, which is annoying, especially if you're on a low-sodium diet or just don't feel like retaining liters and liters of water the next day. But if you follow these instructions faithfully, the hiccups should vanish, pretty much without fail. You can get a real reputation as a miracle worker with this.

A side issue, henceforth possibly to be called Duane's Law of Embarrassment Anxiety: When you are running this routine on someone whose hiccups you *absolutely have to stop* because you'll fall very low in their estimation if you don't, they will *always* be alkalotic, and you will always have to run through all the stages, feeling dumber and more desperate every moment as you go along. (This law first became plain to me when I was de-hiccuping my "Science Challenge" producer at the BBC: if I hadn't proven I was good at the science part by curing him, well, you can imagine.)

And an afterthought: All other even slightly useful hiccup cures service this mechanism in one way or another, by quickly and emphatically changing the blood electrolyte balance. Scaring the person (causes acidosis: see _The Andromeda Strain_), drinking water upside down (forces the person to hold his/her breath, slowly increases the CO2 in the blood), breathing in a paper bag (rebreathing, ditto), whatever: they are all thin pale versions of the One True Cure, trying with greater or lesser effectiveness to shove the blood electrolytes around.

Now go all ye and spread the word, that there may be fewer hiccups in the world.

Arghhhh!

I blame you folks for encouraging my hot-sauce eating habit, and also for somehow making me sensitive to peppers.

Here this thread had made me look forward to the quesadillas I was preparing, but then I bit into one and the Tapatio (another pepper/vinegar type hot sauce, Mexican in origin) made my eyes water copiously and swell shut. After much hand washing, nose blowing, and cold wet washcloths pressed to my eyes, I was able to toss the affected quesadilla pieces and Tapatio into an garbage bag, tie it immediately and was forced to use Trader Joe's Creamy Cilantro dressing as a wet-thing substitute (having run out of their lovely habanero lime salsa last week.)

I don't understand - I have been using Tapatio on all tortilla-related meals since I moved out here and have never had a reaction like that. I blame the power of suggestion.

And I still want to make and eat every single chili recipe in this thread.

Diane Duane: when I get the hiccups, I sit still and concentrate on