Manic Monday - Heat

This is what your mouth will look like inside after you eat some of these....
Of all the sources of heat and all the possibilities, the one that bugs me most is the summer weather! I hate summer and it's vile heat!!! Okay, enough of that hobby horse. So, I choose one of nature's most unique sources of heat and discomfort, the heat emanating from hot peppers!

They can be mild, piquant, stimulating and downright death-defying! I remember a sweet little ol' lady at church who canned some of the hottest killer salsa! We all had a good laugh when the brattiest little boy in the congregation insisted he could handle it. He was told by all that there was no way he was up for this stuff (which I think was pay-back from all the adults who had had it with his brattiness...and were just being passive-regressive!). Being properly egged on, he proceeded to engage in a healthy chip load of the demonic juice and spent the next hour regretting his boastfulness!!! My husband, who was a connoisseur of hot delights, couldn't handle this stuff.

About 30 years ago, I had lunch with a friend at a new Asian restaurant, specializing in Szechuan cuisine with which I was unfamiliar. When my meal arrived it looked wonderful so I dug in with gusto, not suspecting that I was about to render my tongue completely useless for 24 hours!

Good grief! What I thought was just a piece of ordinary vegetable, happened to come from the devil's very own garden - the antithesis of the fruit of good and evil.

I tried to keep my composure and not scream bloody murder. I know, being raised on Mexican food, that drinking liquid is the wrong thing to do when your mouth is literally on fire, but I was afraid to put anymore food into my mouth until I was able to isolate exactly what it was that had perpetrated this horror on it! So, I slowly sipped my ice tea and wondered if I'd ever be able to speak again. I left in a state of shock, not knowing what hit me.

I never did find out what those nasty little sons of bi...oops! I mean, peppers, were, but if we ever need a tool by which to make terrorists divulge their deepest, darkest secrets, I suggest we ship the CIA (or whomever) a boatload of these babies!!!

The Scoville Scale
A scale developed by Wilbur Scoville in 1912, to
measure the heat level in chillies. It was first a
subjective taste test, but since, it has been
refined by the use of HPLC, the unit is named in
honour of its inventor.
The test officially measures the pungency level of a
given pepper. There are other methods, but the
Scoville Scale remains the most widely used and
respected. The greater the number of Scoville units,
the hotter the pepper. Of course, being a natural
product, the heat can vary from pepper to pepper,
so this scale is just a guide.

The original Scoville test asked a panel of tasters
to state when an increasingly dilute solution of the
pepper no longer burned the mouth. Roughly one part
per million of chilli 'heat' rates as 1.5 Scoville
units.
PEPPER - PUNGENCY (SCOVILLE)
Bell, Sweet Italian 0

New Mexico 500-1000

Ancho, Poblano 1000-1500

Jalapeno, Chipolte 2500-10,000

Serrano 5000-23,000

Cayenne, Piquin 30,000-50,000

Habenero 80,000-300,000

HOTTEST RECORDED* 577,000

(*The hottest recorded was a Habenero)

Pure Capsaicin measures 16,000,000 Scoville units!

So, to celebrate Manic Monday, here are some photos of the gorgeous Capsaicin-soaked veggies and what to indulge in after injesting them! Please visit Morgen and join in!