The Habanero Brouhaha

March 17, 2007

Baseball buffs, please to be checking out Bugs & Cranks, where a new post awaits your perusal:

The Replaceables: AL Edition — Like the NL version, one player per team not earning his keep.

That’ll do for now. Let’s get this ball rolling.

My wife, wonderful woman that she is, made tacos for lunch today. I’m a huge fan of tacos, not least because I can load them up with hot sauce and jalapeno peppers. In general, I like my food like I like my burlesque — as spicy as possible, and if somebody’s not sweating, then they’re not doing it right.

“The day there’s no hot sauce in my fridge is the day they pry the last nacho from my cold, dead fingers.”

So, I scampered off to the fridge to pick out some sauces. I keep a whole door shelf devoted to pepper sauces and mixes, with around thirty to choose from on any given day. You never know when a meal will come along that you want to kick up a few notches, so you have to stock up. The day there’s no hot sauce in my fridge is the day they pry the last nacho from my cold, dead fingers.

I like to mix and match a little with something like tacos, so I grabbed three bottles from my stash — the Walkerswood Scotch Bonnet™ (nice heat with some tang), Pickapeppa™ (almost no heat; sweet vinegar flavor), and Xtra Hot Ring of Fire™ (good habanero heat with smoke).

I assembled two tacos, and prepared to sprinkle on hte bottled goodness. Hot sauces in these slender little bottles have a tendency to settle, so it’s a good idea to mix them before using. I gave the Walkerswood a good shake, up-and-down, and drizzled it on.

Then I gave the Pickapeppa a good shake, up-and-down, and poured it on, too.

Finally, I gave the Ring of Fire a good SHAKE, up-and…

The next sound I heard was a wet, sloppy *ger-bloop*. I remembered then that I’d dropped that bottle a while back, and while the bottle was unharmed, the lid had broken in half. I left it resting on top of the bottle, more for looks than anything else. These rather important details came back to me as I watched the lid skitter across the counter, and sank home when I heard various sickening *splat*s on the floor, stove, counter, cabinets, and the plate I was using.

Of course, none of the sauce actually hit the tacos. That would be too easy.

I think I also felt a drop of the stuff land in my hair. I couldn’t worry about that, though — I had to get the obvious mess cleaned up first. My wife would be back for her lunch any minute. She’s not a big ‘heat’ fan — and wonders sometimes if all of those bottles are strictly necessary, the poor misguided girl — so I couldn’t very well let her see a mess like that. So I grabbed two fistfuls of paper towels and scrubbed what I could. By the time she walked in, the mess was no more, the kitchen was clean, and I was cool and nonchalant. She never suspected a thing.

But I never got a chance to check my hair.

So if she nuzzles up next to me on the couch tonight and gets all teary-eyed and sniffly, I’ll know she’s not feeling romanitc. It’s just that I’m hot.

Hot like Fire™!