Oww

The FG loves hot & spicy foods. She orders Indian food with 4-5 stars, asks for her Thai food well curried, and orders extra wasabi with her sashimi. This weekend, she made salsa she almost couldn't eat.

But let us begin at the beginning. As with many shopping stories, this one began with a surfeit of a single ingredient. In this case, there were tortilla chips in the house and nothing to eat with them. So the FG betook herself to her local Whole Paycheck, with a list, and purchased the following:

• one shallot
• two serrano peppers
• one jalapeno pepper
• one head garlic
• cherry tomatoes
• one red pepper

When she returned home, she minced the shallot, three large cloves of garlic, all three peppers, half the red pepper, and 10-12 cherry tomatoes. She added a tablespoon of lime juice, a drizzle of olive oil, and pulled out the tortilla chips for a sample. Hot hot hot. She took an unladylike swig of her Red Stripe. Ow ow ow. She remembered that beer just spreads the heat around, so she ate more chips, sans salsa. Much better. But now what to do? The salsa was made, but it was really too hot for human consumption. She added the rest of the red pepper, and 5 more cherry tomatoes, and plans to continue to add tomatoes to the salsa as she consumes it. In small portions. And she has learned to be a little more reserved in her pepper purchases. Hope you had a great long weekend.