Thou are much hotter and much more likely to inflict pain.

Burritos are a routine part of the dietary cycle chez Infobhan. Give me a Whole Foods, a good knife, and a decent cooking set up, I can take care of the rest. And so it was this weekend. I headed down to my usual organic paradise to pick up the necessary items:

Lime – check
Avocado – check
Cilantro (organic, natch) – check
Onion – check
Tortillas – whole wheat
Meat du jour – got it
Beans – in the can
Tomatoes – vine ripe
Jalepeno…

Where could it be? I paced back and forth through the vegetable aisles, knowing there must be at least one hiding somewhere. But nothing. Not even the an empty basket and sign to suggest a jalepeno smuggler might have just cleared out the lot. I was about to ask one of the workers when I had a sudden fear that this would turn out like “The Forgotten”, the Julianne Moore movie from a few years back where everyone acts like her son never existed. Except this would be with jalepenos. They would just stare at me blankly. 

“Sir, we’ve never had any jalepenos.”

I grabbed the closest replacement I could find and scuttled off to checkout.

Fast forward to a few hours later at home and I am “enjoying” some extremely hot salsa and chasing it with large amounts of water. Turns out that my replacement was a raging-hot habanero, widely respected as the most fearsome of all peppers. My mouth still burns just recalling the episode.

I hope this salmonella scare passes soon.