HOT. HOT. HOT. Peppers that don't mess around with HOT

Getting married pretty makes anyone become domestic. It's kinda inevitable, especially in the cooking department for people like Rob and I who a.) live in the middle of nowhere where take-out/delivery is limited to Kuang's Chinese (and I am not a fan of Chinese food) and b.) would rather spend our money and our calories otherwise. 

So I cook. Actually Rob and I cook a lot together. Except for yesterday when we were having an impromptu picnic with friends and I decided to make homemade veggie pizza. Rob was gone, so I didn't know that the little, friendly looking peppers (pictured here looking so innocent) had actually been in a box at our CSA farm labeled "HOT, HOT, HOT". 

Rob, being the half Mexican he is (and yes, his friend from Mexico actually says that so I'm not being racist or anything) grabbed a handful. So picture me at my little Ikea island chopping these peppers up for pizza and eating wheat thins at the same time. My first clue that these peppers were dangerous impostors in pretty skins was when I brushed, (emphasis on brushed) my finger across my lip and my lip exploded in red hot burning pain. (A note here: I have very low pain tolerance. As Rob can attest, paper cuts severely hurt me and often "gush" blood. But the pain I describe through this post was pain like I've never known. Like someone was holding my body parts over an open flame kind of pain.) 

So while I'm drinking milk like it's my job, I dare Rob to eat one seed and he quickly joins me in the milk drinking. Meanwhile my nose starts running so I wipe it on a kitchen towel which unbeknownst to me had pepper juice in that one spot. So now, not only is my lip burning, I want to pull my nose off my face it hurts so bad. Rob thinks this is hilarious, hence this photo of me with an ice cube up my nose. (Actually, it was really funny and I thought so too). 

We scrapped the peppers obviously (we did not want to poison our friends with hot pepper pizza) and had a great dinner with them outside picnic style. Later, our friend Kyle came over to watch The Kite Runner (p.s. the book is definitely better, but the movie does a pretty good job of being accurate) and it was during the movie the tips of my left hand fingers started burning and tingling. I put them in ice first, but after Kyle left and we were getting ready to go to bed was when the horrible burning pain started. 

Rob started googling solutions for pepper burns so the first thing we did was a bowl of milk for me to soak my hand in. I felt like a cat except I wasn't drinking it. That worked while my hand was in the bowl, but as soon as I took it out the burning started again. Next we tried pain ointment. No luck -- that was worse. Next we tried cider vinegar. Again, it felt good while my hand was in it, but then more burning. Then Rob found that honey can be a good cure. So my genius husband got out some trusty bandaids and put a drop of honey on each pad and wrapped the bandaid around my burning fingertip. We thought we were pretty smart actually. 

Me being the practical one I am, I didn't want to get honey on our clean sheets so we put a spa sock over my hand. This entire time we're laughing hysterically, but I'm in so much pain it's almost not funny. But it really was funny. 

Well, that worked for about 10 minutes and by now it was about 11:00 and I'm getting stressed. As some of you know, I don't do so well without sleep and I was already thinking about work the next day. Rob, being the wonderful husband he is, got up and drove to Handy Andy for some Maalox because we'd read on our Google search that an antacid would neutralize the pain. 

Unfortunately, our Handy Andy is not a pharmacy (it's a gas station actually) so he came home with a $4.50 mini bottle of Pepto Bismal and this is how we spent the next half hour -- me soaking my hand in bubble gum pink Pepto. 

It actually worked. I'm serious -- the burning was soothed. We hopped into bed and I tried to fall asleep as quickly as I could before the burning started again. That lasted about 10 minutes and I was in agony again. 

It was my genius idea to create my Pepto cast. We poured the bottle of Pepto into a giant ziplock bag, sealed it to my wrist, wrapped the excess around my wrist, secured it with a rubberband, and put the spa sock back on it (for leak protection of course. No Pepto on my new sheets!) Ta Da! 

Ahhh....sweet relief. I did actually sleep then with my weird cast. For a few hours anyways. Later in the night it became mind over matter and I tried not to let the burning control me when I woke up, but it was still there. 

At 6 am this morning when the alarm went off and I removed the bag this is what my hand looked like.... 

It was so sick. Like something from a High School Musical alien -- bright, bubbly girl pink. The rubberband had actually cut off some of my circulation (should have used duct tape!) so my hand was swollen about twice its size, plus it was very wrinkly like I'd been in the bath tub for hours. To make matters worse, my skin and nails were literally stained pink. Bright Pepto pink. 

Some scrubbing in the shower took most of it off my skin and eventually the swelling went down so I could put my rings on, but the pink on my nails remained. In fact, as I write this, one hand has pink nails, the other normal. I've tried everything to get it off my nails and it has barely budged. And believe me it looks weird. My boss even commented that it looked like I'd missed a hand. (As an aside for you office fans, Rob suggested I go into work with my hand wrapped in bubble wrap like when Michael grilled his foot in the forman grill.) My boss would have loved that -- he's an Office fan. Unfortunately the rest of our board at the meeting this morning are not as avid fans and would have thought I'd lost it. 

Anyways, the moral of this story? 1. Wear gloves when cutting peppers. 2. Ask your husband how HOT the HOT HOT HOT is before even getting the peppers. And 3. Pepto Bismal WILL stain for possibly a long time. I'll let you know when I get my normal nails back.