by Carol Dunn

Created on: August 31, 2008   Last Updated: September 21, 2008

THE HORROR OF CAPSAICIN

Beware the danger lurking among your pepper plants. When the summer dry spells of southern California are combined with the autumn rains, you may have evil pepper oil lurking in your garden and never even know it.

We had a great little jalapeo pepper plant in our garden. It looked innocent enough. It gave us small green peppers with the perfect jalapeo bite, a spiciness caused by capsaicin. One plant yielded pounds of peppers all summer. When we harvested the rest and froze them for later use, we had enough to last us a year. But the little plant wasn't finished yet.

In late September, it bloomed again. Knowing we would almost surely have frost in a month, we didn't think twice about it. The birds could snack on the withered peppers after the freeze. But the pepper plant had other plans. It did not freeze in October. Does capsaicin inhibit freezing? By early November it had set on about thirty more green jalapeos. They needed attention. But, November is a hectic month: overtime at work, a Thanksgiving trip, raking leaves, holiday stuff. Eventually the little peppers turned orange. I didn't really want them, and somehow they knew it. But I was taught by my depression-era parents to never waste food, so I could hear the peppers nagging, "Pick us! Chop us! Freeze us!" Time kept slipping away, but they were about to exact their revenge.

After the holidays, with no excuses remaining, I harvested the festive jalapeos, which were now bright red. "They're probably a little hotter," I foolishly thought to myself. A little.

"Shouldn't you be wearing rubber gloves or something?" my husband Rick asked, as I washed the jalapeos. But, I was stubborn. Gloves get in the way for a multi-tasker like me. And rubber gloves are the worst to take off then put on again. Besides, I sniffed a pepper, and it didn't smell spicy at all. After cutting the tops off, I could chop them in the food processor. It would be a cinch.

I sliced the peppers open and removed the spiciest parts, the seeds and ribs. I felt a tickle in my throat. On the eighth pepper, the tickle turned to an intermittent cough. By the twelfth, it was a regular cough. By the fifteenth pepper, I could not breathe without hacking and had to flee outdoors for fresh air. In the living room, our daughter Caitlin was coughing, too. Rick wheezed as he passed through the kitchen to check on me. We were the proud owners of the hottest jalapeos in California, and Ripley's was nowhere to be found.

When I was able

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