It's been a warm winter in Austin so far. But at about 930am on this fine Christmas morning, things get decidedly warmer for Vivian. We've been cooking for Christmas and our usually clean (read unused) kitchen is a mess (here is where I am setting up the excuse for what follows). Vivian is crawling around the living room and kitchen when she decides to eat about half of a bright red chile piquin - about the size of a mini M&M.
Much screaming, washing, feeding yogurt, sucking on ice, and applying olive oil. A call to the on-call nurse at the pediatrician. After about 10 minutes, she's back to normal. After another hour, Jo and I are still a bit shaky.
I eat the remaining four peppers for breakfast. I need a glass of water after that. The peppers grow on a small bush in our front yard. As peppers go, these midgets are hot - about 100,000 on the Scoville scale. Compare that with 8,000 for jalapenos, and 200,000 for the really hot habaneros. Turns out that the hottest pepper out there is the Naga Jalokia from India at about 1,000,000 Scovilles.
One day when you are older, we'll give the naga a shot, girl. Oh yeah, and Merry Christmas.
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