Chile (not Chili) Challenge

I was on a mission today when I went to the farmer's market downtown on my lunch break. I had my heart set on fresh, homemade caramel apples. Not just for myself, but I had an order to fill from my coworkers as well. Last week I'd eyed the apples covetously (now I know how Eve felt) but a cash shortage kept me from indulging. This week however, cash was burning a hole through my tote bag and I could practically taste the tart-sweet crunch of the caramel and the apple, a little piece of the Fall of my childhood imported to the big city I now called home. Unfortunately, Fall was just going to have to wait. Apparently everyone else in the city had the same craving as I did, because by the time I arrived, the apples were gone - completely sold out. Awesome.

Determined not to let the apple shortage get me down, I wandered from stand to stand, mentally flipping through the limited recipes I knew that used veggies as the main ingredient. I'll be the first to admit that I have a very short list of vegetables that I actually enjoy eating (corn!). Mostly I eat them because I figure I should eat them. Actually, mostly I don't eat them at all. Ha! So with that knowledge and the fact that my vegetarian roomie was out of town that night, I eventually settled on making nachos. Some ground beef with the Chipotle pepper flakes I got from work, some chopped onion, bell pepper and the rest of the Mexican cheese blend I had in the fridge, and ta da! Nachos.

I was on my way back to the office with my purchases when one stand in particular caught my eye. A stand with shelves of baskets, brimming with shiny, alluring red peppers was covered with signs that screamed "10 for $1.00." Like a child drawn to a freshly frosted cake, I edged closer, just to look. Hanging from each basket was a sign, on which someone had scrawled the variety of chile pepper as well as the Scoville measurement, and if THAT couldn't hook me, then nothing could. Suddenly the chile peppers became research. They became shiny red opportunity to see for myself what the chileheads were all so excited about. I'd recently written an article that covered hot sauces, and not being an aficionado of hot sauces, I decided to go straight to the source and figure out what all the fuss was about. I armed myself with a plastic bag and selected a variety of chile peppers, ranging in shape from bulbous and innocuous to thin, curly and deadly. Their Scoville ratings ran from 200 - 200,000 (the hottest chile on record hails from India - the Naga Jolokia, measuring in at 1,040,000), which promised to be a good time when I was tasting them.

It's hard to have buyer's remorse when you get ten chilies for a dollar, but when I got back to work, it hit me - what in the heck am I going to do with ten chilies?! Not only that, but I certainly didn't remember which chili was which with them being all mixed up in the bag. When I got them home to taste them, as in, my "scientific research," who knew if I'd be biting in a pepper with 200 or 200,000 SHU (Scoville heat units). If nothing else, I wouldn't be bored!

I got home with my cache and jotted down a few notes - I knew I'd be blogging about this later. As my pen scratched across the paper, I could smell the peppers, fresh and spicy from the plastic bag on the table, taunting me with spiciness unknown. I arranged the peppers on the table, grouping together the ones that looked similar, and then it was time. Time to taste my fate.

It's funny how, until we actually taste the heat on our tongue, burning the back of our throat, making our eyes water, and nose run, we forget what the heat feels like. I sliced off a tiny sliver of the most friendly looking pepper on the table and crunched it between my teeth. Nothing! Like biting into a bell pepper. I sliced off a larger piece and bit it, with the same disappointing effect. Tasting my way down the line to the smaller, more threatening-looking chiles had the same effect! Not one pepper I purchased gave me the slightest rush of blood to the face. I still don't know what the problem was, but I was definitely disappointed by my anticlimatic end of my great chile challenge.