Gill and I had the idea of making a really nice dinner to celebrate the fact that the term from hell (otherwise known as Spring of 2011) was finally over. We decided on jerk chicken--I was inspired by my grad school friend Shawn who had put up a delicious looking picture on Facebook of a jerk chicken dinner he had made, and Gill said that her father made especially good jerk chicken during the summertime. Sometimes naivete is so wonderful. We tried using a recipe from the Food Network, but I quickly felt overmatched (e.g. not having the right ingredients, etc.). But we forged through with the meal plan...
Jerk chicken, when done right, can be an especially spicy meal. One of the ingredients that gives it such a tremendous kick is the habanero pepper:
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| Secretly Dangerous Mofos |
These bad boys pack one hell of a punch. According to Wikipedia, it registers 100,000 - 350,000 Scoville Heat Units. I didn't have any sort of means of knowing how spicy that was... but just trust me when I think that range of heat units is appropriate.
Anyways, I was given the task of removing the seeds, which went fine enough. Apparently, though, I didn't have the brains to wash or wipe my hands after using the peppers. I brought my hand up to stifle some sniffles that I had been having, and it hit me instantaneously.
My nose was on fire. The inside of my nose. Holy crap. I couldn't even function. Fortunately, Gill was in the kitchen and looked up the best remedy for "peppers in the nose" (approximate Google search). The first response to it was to drink some alcohol, so we cracked open a beer. It provided only temporary relief. The second response was to put some sort of item (cotton ball, q-tip) covered with milk into the nostril. So while I went to the bathroom trying to flush out my nose with water, Gill brought some milk over. And, as you can probably guess, yes, I went and stuck milk covered q-tips into both of my nostrils (by this point, the sensation had spread from one nostril to the other, and it was getting to the point to where the outside of my nose felt like it had the worst sunburn ever).
The solution to the pepper in the nose problem worked well enough. The worst of the fiery sensation was over, but it still remained for the next hour to an hour and a half.
But the experience made me wonder... who was the first person to think "Lemme stick some milk in my freakin' nose to make this pepper fire go away?" I'd like to meet them and thank them personally.
