Being a garden neophyte can be a bad deal. I am familiar with most vegetables, having eaten just about everything edible as a child. My father was an avid, almost rabid gardener and by default, my mother was an avid, almost rabid canner and freezer of vegetables, fruits and meats. As I said, if it was edible, my family ate it. (You may recall a posting where I mentioned that the color of the food was not the predetermining factor for consuming a food in our household - no matter the age. The odor of the food determined whether or not my mother served it at mealtime.)
While dad grew a multitude of vegetables in his very large garden, we were not a family accustomed to any variety of spices. Our spice and herb world was confined to ground black pepper, salt, maybe thyme and marjoram, cinnamon, dill weed and bay leaves. Spicy foods or foods considered to be 'hot' were not made available to our palates. Consequently, consuming hot-spicy dishes has been limited to my adulthood. As an acquired taste, I'm developing a fondness for and tolerance to those types of dishes VERY SLOWLY, if at all.
Here comes the take-home part of this posting.
This summer a friend of ours, who has a huge garden, kindly shared some very mild banana peppers with us that were delicious. I naively assumed that all peppers that are shaped like those, with the same coloration, taste alike.
Not.
Last Saturday my SO and I visited a local farmers' market. I spied some peppers that looked like the ones our friend had shared with us so I bought a few. Fast forward to the first night we returned to the boat from meeting Gale Storm. I cut up two banana peppers and added the pieces to the salads I'd prepared. Then I declared that my eyes were tired and I would go remove my contacts.
Can you see where this story is going?
I began my contact-removing routine which involves putting the tip of two fingers in my eye............
Of course, I had no idea that pepper oil would remain on my fingers and could produce a burning sensation on sensitive tissue. Rinsing my hands was clearly not effective in removing the pepper oil and for the next fifteen minutes I was an eye-flushing and hand-scrubbing fool with soap, water and contact solution. The good news is that after my frenetic efforts, the burning sensation dissipated and my eyes returned to normal.
Please learn from my bad deal. Then again, perhaps most others already knew what I so painfully learned!
Ancora imparo
