SPICY: Handle with Care.

I am just now getting around to processing some of the hot peppers I picked on the last day of our farm share in mid-October.  I had dried them in the oven shortly after picking them and let them continue to dry for the last couple of months.  I had fatalis, which at about 250,000 Scoville Heat Units (SHU), is the 6th hottest pepper in the world, cayennes (~30,000 SHU) and some Hinkelhatz peppers, (~125,000 SHU).  Having handled these peppers in the past and had burning fingers for days, I purchased disposable kitchen gloves for the job.  I started with the cayennes.  I desperately need a spice grinder, and had to settle instead for using my mini Cuisinart food processor.  I had a few seeds, but I’m willing to live with that.  I then moved onto the Hinkelhatzes.  A slight burning tickled my nose.  Commence sneezing!  For the next 10 minutes…until my lungs burned.

Moving on to the fatalis, I considered wrapping a mask around my face.  And then I looked at my cat, Parma, sitting on the stool next to my work station.  And I thought that it would be inhumane to spread a fine mist of fatali powder into the air.  If peppers half as spicy as a fatalis caused me such irritation, I could only imagine what it would these kickers would do to a kitty.  So there the fatalis sit, in my food processor, in a corner of the kitchen.  Just waiting.  Waiting until I get an extension cord and take them to the porch.  Waiting for the chilly New England drizzle to stop.  Waiting for a safer time and place.  They’ve been waiting for two months; another week or two won’t kill them, right?