1. Believe the hype - the habanero is hot: My friend, Tara, gave me a cookbook that was centered around the habanero pepper. At one point, that's all I could talk about regardless of ever having the nerve to try. This was right when my love of hot foods was burgeoning. It became more of a joke just b/c it wasn't a popular pepper about ten years ago down in Southern California. So she gave me this book filled with awesomeness; little did I know that it also contained one of the most horrible pains I have ever dealt with.
At the apartment that I shared with Spencer, Tara's future husband...they didn't know it at the time, I decided that I would finally make something from this cookbook. Up until that point, I had just stared at a few of the items in there and read and re-read the warnings. Kid you not, the book told me to wear gloves and, if I was using dried habanero's, to wear a mask SO THAT I WOULD NOT BE OVERWHELMED BY THE FUMES!!! Being a man, I figured I would forgo the gloves and cut the fresh habanero's by hand for the salsa. After getting all the ingredients together and letting them settle for the 2 or 3 hours the recipe called for I went to wash my hands. Now, I didn't just wash my hands once... nor did I run water over them and not use soap. I washed my hands at least two times; maybe more, but my memory is fuzzy. During the three hour wait I sat on the computer browsing the internet and otherwise getting ready for my first salsa. For whatever reason, I decided to rub my eye.... and found the one piece of habanero that was spiteful enough to find it's way into my eye. It wasn't brief. It didn't build up slowly in my eye socket. It was intense. It hurt. And it spread. In my blindness, I ran to bathroom to attempt to remove the pepper from my eye and that just made it worse. I'm assuming that by running water into my eye it made it spread down my face. I can imagine that's probably what it's like to hold a lighter to the interior of your nostril and let it run for a day. I aged 10 years that day, but God gave me superhuman sight for surviving. It was a good trade-off. The salsa was also pretty good too.
2. Blazin' means Blazin' and that's all Blazin' Means - Buffalo Wild Wings has a contest that you have to eat 9 or 12 of their hottest wings in 3 minutes just for the chance to purchase a shirt, and to get a picture of the life seeping out of you posted on their wall of death. I may be stupid, but I'm not stupid enough to go into a challenge of that magnitude blind. Leah and I had lunch at BWW while we were having a Cucamonga date day. Leah doesn't like BWW, but she endures for the sake of her husbands insanity(you're not insane if you call yourself insane, right?). I got my regular HOT wings so I could enjoy the serenity that we were blessed with that day. But, to go, I got 5 of their Blazin' wings for later in the day. We finished up our trip, picked up dinner, and went home. I didn't have a clue that in the trunk of the car was a small box of wings dipped in the Lake of Fire. And I'm not joking! I firmly believe that they have a porthole in each restaurant where they send a few wings into Hades for a quick dip... possibly to torture the unrepentant, and back up to living. They are worthy of being a snack at church during a fire and brimstone sermon. If the sermon doesn't get you, a few of these will be heading you to your destination shortly.
Back to it, we were watching some TV and I decided that I wanted to see what the afterlife had in store for me. I pulled out on of the wings... boneless for ease... and heated it up in the microwave. There was no need to be fancy. This wasn't a traditional dinner item and didn't deserve the oven. I could feel the wing staring up at me from it's quickly heated state just daring me to eat it. Not being one to back down from a taunting wing, I took a medium sized bite. The taste wasn't that bad.. but not as good as their HOT wing sauce. It was more earthy, and didn't seem that hot. Maybe just a slight burning sensation to say, "Oh Hai, get ready! K Thnx Bai" But there was no "Bai" happening. I finished off the wing in the next bite or two.... and that's when it happened. The temperature continued to rise, and rise quickly. It's very hard to explain it, but I believe that if I had been outside I could have started a brush fire just by breathing out. It was hellish..... and all that for something that didn't taste that good! After half a gallon of milk, and 45 minutes later, the pain went down to a reasonable level. Usually milk helps, but this heat just laughed it off and turned it up to 11. As always, stupidity remains, and next time I'm at BWW I'm getting their Wild sauce and trying that one out. It's one step below Blazin'.
I'm going to end it at that point... my eye is bleeding just by writing up about that habanero. I don't believe it's over it yet.
-D
