I should just rename this the food blog. Or the grocery shopping blog.
Went to the groceryveggie market and got the cheap vegetables. It blows my mind that red peppers are $0.79/lb at this place and still $1.99 at the big grocery store. My mind has been BLOWN!
Anyway, the groceryveg market sells all kinds of fun vegetables: hot peppers, kale, things from China. Wacky fun! I usually buy some hot peppers because I like them and usually they are kind of Dilbert-hot, y’know, not, like, Lynda Barry-hot. The kind of hot where I can eat a whole one and still add black pepper to whatever I’m eating. For lunch I made some pasta with vegetables in olive oil -red pepper, mushroom, garlic, one hot pepper. These little buggers are orange and look like this:
with catt
with Ozzy’s foot
with a duck
and with a squirrel
No animals were harmed in the production of these photos. This is because none of the above pictured actually consumed the pepper in question. You’ll notice there is no picture of me.
I was happily chopping and humming to myself and just threw the whole pepper into the pan. It’s not very big, I reasoned. Cutting it didn’t make my eyes water. I sniffed it: it smelled good but my nose didn’t burn to a crisp in an instant. No, I did not lick the pepper.
Once in the pan, there were no fumes, there was no fire alarm, nothing went amiss. I put the pasta in the bowl, put the vegsauce on top, grated some nice, sharp parmesan (I cheaped out and bought the padano but it seems against the law suddenly to sell reggiano in pieces that cost less than $20) on top and even took the hot chili flakes and the black pepper mill to the table with me, just in case the pepper wasn’t hot at all, but sweet or sour or something. I ate a piece of pasta and a bit of sweet, red pepper. Whoo! Things are looking hot! I gleefully took another bite, as I have a fairly high tolerance for hot things. Jumpin’ squirrel jujubes! It weren’t so much hot as it were a carpeted van with velvet seat covers and no air conditioning, driving across the southern US in August.
I ate a few more bites, and one slice of mushroom (as you may know, mushrooms just absorb everything they’re put anywhere near, which is why they’re hardly ever invited to the beach) and my face became a sweaty beet. The catt watched me even closer than usual. He put a paw tentatively on my knee but withdrew it quickly. His fur was singed.
Along with my nice, light lunch, I consumed seven slices of bread and eight pieces of mozzarella because otherwise I couldn’t have finished the small bowl of pasta and vegetables. It’s too bad I can’t abide creamy textured things because there is peach yogurt in the fridge and that would have cooled me off – but it also would have made me vomit and then we’d have to start all over again.
If you choose to take a lesson from this, let it be to always lick the end of a cut hot pepper before adding it, scarity-woo, to your food. And don’t forget to clean the cutting board and knife or you just know the next thing you (or the person you live with – hee!) eat will be the spiciest peanut butter sandwich EVER.
Off you go.