A Cautionary Tale About Jalapenos

ninainthechiUncategorized%s Comments

I spent about an hour last night with butter on, in and around my nose.

Public Service Announcement: do not scrape the seeds from the inside of a jalapeno with your bare hands.

Bonus tip: if you do, do not rub or itch your nose. Under any circumstances.

Like an idiot, I went to town on those jalapeno seeds with my fingers, did not wash my hands or even think about it. Heading outside to kick on the grill, I noticed that my nose felt prickly. Then warm. Then really, really hot. Then burning. Flat out burning.

It was at this moment I realized that this was probably jalapeno related.

I washed my face and tried to rub the burn off to no avail; it got worse and worse so I googled “What do you do when you get jalapeno on your face?”. Every single post started with the sentence “When cutting jalapenos, be sure to wear gloves.”

Bro. I would not be googling this had I worn gloves. Lay off me.

We don’t drink milk so the only dairy product on hand was butter so butter it was. And butter it stayed for an hour, aka when the burning began to calm down. My husband walks in the door to find me trying to finish dinner with one hand and with a stick of butter on my face in the other. It worked, eventually, but my goodness. Hot and bothered is the only way I can describe it and not in the good way.

In conclusion: be far more careful around hot peppers than I was last night and have butter on hand in case of an emergency.