My lawn was excited for all the rain, but my tomatoes were not. After two days, the fruits started to crack. Purple, yellow, red — Every plant had at least five time bombs just seconds away from exploding into seeds and pulp.

I harvested as many ripe (and near-ripe) tomatoes as I could carry and gingerly set them on the kitchen counter. Then I rummaged through the fridge and found a bulb of garlic (Wisconsin), an onion (Wisconsin), a lime, an orange, a bunch of cilantro (all three not from Wisconsin) and a Bulgarian Carrot Pepper (from my garden, not from Bulgaria).

Bulgarian Carrot Pepper

There was only one thing left to do: Make some tasty salsa!

I tuned into KMOJ for a little “Back in the Day” with Ray Richardson, whipped out a cutting board, and started seeding, chopping and crushing. I was proud of my preparedness — and my cleverness. I had just saved myself and my tomatoes from disaster.

Then, puffed up on pride, I violated one of the cardinal laws of cooking: Do not touch your face after chopping a hot pepper. (I thought that Bulgarian Carrot Peppers were a 2 out of 5… but they are actually a 4.)

The moment I scratched my nose, my world exploded into a blur of firery chaos. My nostrils burst into flames and snot started to run. I grabbed a tissue, then my upper lip started to burn. Tears rolled down my face. I tried stopping them with the back of my hand, then promptly put hot pepper in my eye.

I ran to the bathroom to wash my face, but the burning (and my vision) only got worse. The pepper pain was unstoppable. I ran back into the kitchen, sliced up a cucumber and put slices over my eyes to cut the heat. My nostrils were still burning, but luckily, I had enough sense to stop myself from stuffing cucumber wedges up my nose.

“Yogurt! I have yogurt in the fridge!”

I spread yogurt over my nose and mouth… just as the BF walked in the door.

“What the hell happened to you?” He turned red and then turned away, trying his hardest not to laugh.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

I was able to salvage the salsa, sorta. I was so freaked out by my hot pepper, that I got the proportions all wrong and the concoction kinda turned into a chunky gazpacho.

Yeah, yellow tomatoes and red tomatoes don’t look so hot together, but they sure taste good.

More adventures in eating local will be posted tomorrow… Any advice for handling hot peppers would be most welcome.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 21st, 2007 at 3:53 pm and is filed under Tomatoes, Peppers + Eggplant. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.