The story goes like this. For weeks now, I have looked back and forth and forth and back through Pioneer Woman Ree Drummond's online cookbook, found here.
I've already tried a few of her fabulous concoctions, and believe me, sooner or later, I will get around to making nearly everything on her list. I must, because they all look delicious -- even if most of them aren't exactly dishes I could eat more than once a year, not unless I want to end up looking like a hot air balloon. (Ree, you lucky gal. If only I were a pioneer woman, too, and then it would be bye bye to workout dvds and hello to burnin' off calories chasin' around rascals and cattle and mustangs, diggin' things up in the garden and so on and so forth!)
But last Saturday evening, I finally had the time and energy to try my hand at one of Ree's recipes that had looked particularly intriguing: the "Bacon-Wrapped Jalapeno thingies." Not exactly light in calories, but I did want to try one. At least one. Just once. Please? Plus, I knew my boyfriend would probably go gaga for them, seeing as he likes hot foods, cheese and dude, what man does not love bacon?
So, with great anticipation, I begin working away in the kitchen while the boyfriend was watching something on the Discovery Channel. (Any other women out there who can relate to this scenario, raise your hands. Oh good, I'm glad so many of you could make it here today.) I start cutting the jalapenos in half and then scooping out their insides, just as instructed in the recipe. The process might go faster for someone who has made these many times, but for me, it's rather tedious, and so I decide to make only six. I only want one, anyway -- maybe two, at the most -- and then I'm giving the rest of them to the nice young man sitting on the couch.
[Did you notice me switch from past tense to present tense somewhere back there? That's the signal that this is going to be a good story.]
With maybe only two jalapenos left to go, I realize that I am feeling a slight tingle on the outside corner of my right eye. Now, knowing that you are not, under any cirumstances, EVER supposed to touch your face when you have jalepeno juice on your hands, I was very careful to use a clean washcloth to rub my eye -- because I thought that maybe my eyes were just getting dry, as they do most evenings.
SADLY, I must have gotten some jalapeno juice on my face anyway somehow. Now, I don't know whether this happened as I absentmindly brushed aside my bangs, or whether the darn thing squirted a little when I cut into it, or what. All I know is ... Gradually, but swiftly, that slight tingling I was feeling became a stinging. And then the stinging became a burning. And then the burning became a full-on BLAZE.
And while this is going on, I am setting down my kitchen tools, and I am screaming for my boyfriend to help me, and I am telling him that I think I'm going to lose my vision, because, you see, the fire was beginning to spread. It started expanding from my eye area to my cheek and my eyebrow, and then to my forehead and around my mouth and even down to my chin. MY FACE WAS ON FIRE.
So the good man, god bless him, follows me as I stumble-run to the bathroom, where I try to splash cold water into my eye and onto my face to get the evil, evil jalapeno juice as far away from me as possible. Tragically, however, there is something frustrating about jalapeno juice that I had yet to discover -- it can't really be diluted. Meaning, splashing water into my eye and onto my face only spread the stuff around to any other parts of my face that hadn't already been affected.
I look up try to look up at my boyfriend and tell him that I think we may need to go to the emergency room. He says, "OK, let's wait a minute." And I'm thinking, I don't even know what that means! My face is BURNING! What does you want to WAIT for? It to spread to all my limbs, too? And as I open my mouth to voice these thoughts, I can't even get the words to come out. I just start crying hysterically. Because it hurts so bad, and because I am afraid that I may never see again.
So there I am, wounded, frantic and about to crumble to the bathroom floor, and my always-calm-in-a-time-of-crisis-Eagle-Scout-boyfriend says again, "Wait just a minute, I'll be right back." And when he returns, he is holding a cup of milk. I am confused. Maybe because the jalapeno juice has started to saturate my brain at this point, I just don't know. He tells me to lean my head over the bathroom sink, and then he begins to slowly pour cold milk over my face.
[Are you picturing this? I hope it's making you feel better about your day, if you happened to have had a bad one. You're welcome.]
The milk did help; it set the blaze back down to burning status, and I was no longer lamenting things like the possibility that I may never see again, or never have a career again, or you know, DIE. And since I was in no condition to continue cooking, my boyfriend sat me down next to him on the couch with a cold ice pack so that we could watch an informative special about trains.
[And there's the switch back to past tense. Is it sad that the copy editor in me has to point these things out? Actually, don't answer that.]
I don't really know how long it took for the pain to subside to the point where I could go back into the kitchen. I think it must have been at least an hour or so. (And in fact, my face still tingled when I went to bed, so let it be known that the effects are long-lasting.) And like a child who has burned her hand on a stovetop, or been bitten by a dog, or fallen off the jungle gym, or been thrown off a horse ... I really, really wanted to just avoid anything and everything to do with the mishap forever and ever. And ever. Amen.
But, I am a firm believer in the ol' "If you fall off, you gotta get right back in the saddle" saying. Because, I believe, if you don't, you're left scared for a long time after, and that can be crippling in certain situations. You have to face your fears!
So, like a nutter butter brave, determined person, I went right back to the cutting board and hacked that little pepper to bits. Oh it got what it deserved, all right. And then I stuffed them all with cream cheese, wrapped them in bacon and threw them in the oven! [Insert wicked witch cackle here.]
Do you want to know how they turned out?
TOO DARN HOT. Apparently, I had not scooped out enough of the peppers' inside membrane, which is supposed to be where the majority of the hotness is contained. So after all that, I really couldn't eat the darn things. On the plus side, my boyfriend somehow loved them, even if the only way he could get them down was to stamp his feet while chewing and repeatedly exclaim, "Whew! That's hot!" over and over again, while wearing a slightly pained look on his face and guzzling water.
In summation, it was the worst physical pain I have ever experienced. Excruciating. Childbirth should not be a problem. If you are such a whizbang that you can cook with these things and not end up incapacitated on the floor, then congratulations, you should probably head for Hollywood, because you are a superstar with skillz, baby.
But, if you are like me -- ambitious, always meaning well, but a little bit of a klutz -- and have never cooked with jalapenos before and were planning to do so one day in the future, please, I beg you, in the words of Heather B. Armstrong, "BE YE NOT SO STUPID."
No comments:
Post a Comment