As a teacher, it is not uncommon for my darling students to bring me treats. Fresh eggs from their chickens. A bag of lychee from the farmers market when it is Lychee season. Over the years students have brought me tea, fresh baked cookies, tomatos from their garden, an apple for the teacher, and other wonderful goodies. But this past week I had a student bring me a bag of mystery peppers. To be fair, I didn't ask what they were. I just assumed they were sweet peppers from the farmers market. They did have a funny deformed shape to them. But that can happen with organic gardening.
Fast forward to last night. I wanted to make pasta and add these fine peppers from my student. So I chop them on a cutting board. I have bad allergies and I wiped my nose. Again, to be fair, I should know better than touch my nose while I am cooking. That is just not sanitary. Moments after touching my nose is when the most incredible burn sets in. I grab an ice cube and stuff it up my nose. I wash my hands. A few minutes later I must have rubbed my eye. BURNING EYE! I grab another ice cube and shove it in my eye socket. It is around this point when Alex walks into the kitchen and sees me cooking with ice cubes up my nose and in my eye. I cry "WHAT kind of pepper is THAT?!!?" He says "I think that is a Scotch Bonnet". We do a google search. It is THE HOTTEST PEPPER IN THE WORLD. Nice. What kind of student brings their innocent music teacher THE HOTTEST PEPPER IN THE WORLD? Especially Jessie. I think TOOTHPASTE is spicy. Everyone knows I have no tolerance for hot and spicy food.
Direct quote from encyclopedia:
Most scotch bonnets have a heat rating of 350,000 Scoville Units. For comparison, the jalapeno peppers have a heat rating of 2,500 on the Scoville scale.
I cried to Alex "I think my student must hate me! Why else would someone do this?" as my flaming nose drips in burning pain. I made Alex pick out all the peppers from my pasta. I will hang a note on my music door entrance "Please do not feed the Music Teacher" from now on!
3 comments:
We had a similar experience with peppers...only WE Grew them! We were sharing our garden space with our tenants in the trailer...so they offered to supply the pepper plants. We didn't know THEY didn't know anything about peppers. And,of course,once you remove the labels..the plants look alike!
Sometime later,I harvested some CUTE miniature green peppers...having NO thought of what they might really be...and like you, I learned the hard way.YIKES!They were so hot!
Maybe instead of denying your students the joy of gifting their teacher..you might ask them to be sure to educate you and identify ANYTHING they bring you.
did you know some peppers can even give you first degree burns on your skin?? better double check your nose!!! thats such a funny story!!!
i have come back to this post over and over again just to laugh. i visualize you shoving the ice in your face and Alex coming in.. just too funny. for future reference though, i believe cocoa powder helps with the burn, and you can help get residue off your hands by rubbing stainless steel. dont know why it works. it works with onions too when you need to get onion off your fingers.. just stroke your stainless steel.
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