Fire! Fire!

Yesterday I decided to make a stew. I had the usual wide range of ingredients: tomato, onion and a big red pepper. With little else to do in the afternoon I meticulously chopped and sliced each item into small small pieces. After cooking, I set my stew to the side, not yet hungry enough to enjoy such a rich feast.

It was about 20minutes later that the burning started. In my nose! Not far up, but just round the edge. “What’s this?” I thought to myself. I wasn’t sure but I did know that I needed to do something. I snorted some water, but to no avail, the flames licked my nostrils. Soon, I noticed a tingling in my thumb, spreading from underneath my fingernail. I licked it and my tongue fizzed.

I set my mind to work. It could only be one culprit. The shiny red pepper was in fact a GIANT PEPPE! The scoundrel is the African equivalent of a chili and I had been chopping it with gay abandon, its juices sliding freely under my nails.

I managed to douse the fire before my nose turned to cinders but my thumbs are still burning!