That &^%*&^%&(% Devil Pepper
This is my homemade pico de gallo. 90% of the reason we even have a garden is so I can make buckets and buckets of this stuff all summer long. I am going to say that the vast majority of Nathan Benson's yearly vegetable consumption is from homemade pico. It is basically what we live on from June through September.
This year, while shopping for vegetable plants at the greenhouse, I brought Evie along. She loves any sort of shopping and immediately began finding the plants she thought we really needed. Unfortunately, her main criteria was the plants that happened to be closest to her which in this case was peppers. I didn't object because to make pico we certainly needed plenty of pepper plants. But my mistake was in not actually looking too closely at her choices. You see, we aren't folks who like the super hot things, I tend to stick with the sweet to maybe mildly hot peppers and dose it up with a bit of jalapeno if need be.
But I paid for everything Evie put in the basket, assuming that at a Midwestern greenhouse I couldn't get too far off track. Finding time to plant a garden while running a farm and working full time means that I planted everything in those odd pockets of time I could find during the next week and that I didn't really pay attention to what was what and discarded the handy little plastic tags that might have saved me.
Fast forward 2 months....
We have had a few rounds of pico with the first peppers from the garden--all easily recognizable banana peppers or sweet peppers. But this week, a new kind of pepper looked ready to pick. It wasn't something I recognized--something quite long, green and rather skinny. It kind of looked like a cross between a chili and an Anaheim. But it didn't ping any danger recognition in me for "super hot" peppers and not much else was ready, so I picked some and chopped several up with the rest. I remember noting that my hands stayed "hot" (as in the pepper oil didn't wash off and kept burning my eyes) for way longer than normal. But by the time we went to eat this batch of pico, I had forgotten that key detail.
I always let my pico sit a day or two before eating, to let the flavors meld. I took the new batch out and dug in. On the second bite, I knew I was in big trouble.
I like spicy foods. I pride myself on not being the typical "black pepper is too spicy for me" Midwesterner. I have won jalapeno eating contests against all-comers. But the devil pepper took me down.
The burning was intense and somehow covered my entire mouth at once, as if I had swished habanero mouthwash. I started sweating and my eyes watered to the point that I nearly could not see my way to the sink to get water. A glass of water turned to a glass of milk, the glass of milk turned into 3 glasses of milk and still the heat would not subside. There may have been a point where I too full of milk to drink anymore and so I was just pouring it through my burning mouth and letting it run into the sink. I was that far gone.
After about 30 minutes of torture and finally stuffing a piece of bread in my mouth to soak up the pepper oil, the suffering subsided. Evie had been in the kitchen with me throughout and had thoroughly enjoyed the spectacle of her mother hopping around and sloshing milk through her mouth. She was visibily disappointed when the show ended and actually asked me if I wanted some more pico.
Somehow I think if she knew how her pepper choice had led eventually to my performance, I think she might make the whole sequence repeat itself. I fear for the day when she is a better planner.
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