Read the <blessed> label . . .

. . . (unless, of course, the label’s missing). Last Saturday I taught class in the morning, Marlana and I donated blood in the afternoon, and then we got a lot of chores done around the house, so around 10:00 we decided that chili mac sounded good for dinner. I had gotten a chili plant a few weeks ago from a local nursary, but it didn’t have a tag telling what it was. The fruit are very pretty; I thought that it was a Scotch bonnet, and Marlana concurred. There was one large, ripe pepper on the plant, so I chopped it up and added it to a can of chili (for me, an unimproved can for Marlana). Whilst the pasta was cooking and the chili heating, Marlana poked around on the internet and finally found a picture that looked exactly like my pepper. A Naga Viper. 1.3 million on the Scoville scale. (Roughly the equivalent of 4 - 5 large habaneros.) A bit much . . . it turns out . . . for one can of chili. Tasty, but a bit much.

^I call BS on this one. Unless your can was about 100 gallons big.

Well, I was going home from… pumping iron, and then, I saved an old woman from being hit by a bus. So there.

If BS returns your call, tell her it was a wrong number.

Jazzercise? Please tell me you teach Jazzercise.

Prepare to be disappointed.

It was Zumba wasn’t it? Everyone knows Jazzercise is better than Zumba. I expected so much more from you.

I’m pleased to report that it wasn’t Zumba.

Rest easy.

S2000 is the Dos Equis guy.

I’m pretty sure that the Dos Equis guy isn’t stupid enough to put a whole Naga Viper into a single can of chili.

“I don’t always eat chili, but when I do it’s made with Naga Viper.”

I don’t do spicy myself, but I’ve seen people eat wings with Naga Viper sauce on them and they wouldn’t describe the experience as “a bit much”.

I regularly make salsa with 5 – 6 habaneros to a pound of tomatillos; thus, the chili was about twice as hot as my typical salsa.

…assuming the water content of the fresh naga viper is identical to that of a habanero, since the scoville unit is typically defined as the heat sensitivity reported by test subjects per unit of dry mass in a solution.

After reading that comment I find myself…aroused.

Where do you live that you can grow these exotic peppers? I assume I can’t grow Bhut Jolokias out in the midwest.

I could grow the Carolina Reaper here in KC. I wouldn’t because I value my life. But I could.

Southern California.

I tried to get a Carolina Reaper but they were sold out; I’ll have to check earlier next year. However, a gentleman I know from a local deli has one; we’re going to have a salsa contest in September.

Although these days they probably use a mass spectrometer or some similar gizmo: less subjective.

Oh man. . . I love this guy lol