¡AyAyAy!

My girlfriends started a book club.  We named it, "My Book Club Reads Wine Labels."  I am hosting this time.  Which means I pick the book.  The Master and Margarita.  And while I like the book, it is just so incredibly hard to read.  Like difficult enough that nobody has finished it yet and most just gave up.  A friend not in this little club of ours commented that it is his favorite book....but that he read it in a college course...with a professor helping them understand it.  So, I'm thinkin' I might be missing a lot, but whatevs.  On to the more important stuff:  Food.

I am making roasted baby bell peppers stuffed with cream cheese, walnuts and green onions; fruit with a sour cream based dip; mushroom stuffed vienna bread; chips and dip; pico de gallo.  The pico is solely because I am obsessed with it.  I could easily eat a tub of it every day.  Like a bathtub of it.  Since I am so pico oriented lately, I have been making it quite often.  And making it without incident.  Last night's batch?  Incident-central.

As of late, the jalapeños at the store have been pretty darn mild.  Which is just fine for pico in my book.  I don't know if Trav got these particular peppers from the Nuclear Pepper selection or what, but holy shitballs.  I cut the top off of the first one and immediately sneezed.  It just smelled spicy.  So, I made sure to core and seed it really well to get the heat out.  Ha!  This pepper laughed at me.  There is a very real possibility this will go down as inedible pico de gallo.  Which is the least of my concerns.

I cannot get the pepper oil off of my fingers.  I have washed them a ton of times.  I have done a sugar scrub with a nail scrubber.  Nothin'.  Putting in my contacts this morning re-introduced me to a form of torture I cannot believe mobsters don't use.  And here I sit, my hands with a slow steady tingly burn and my eyes itching like mad from my allergies.  Luckily I touched my forehead a little while ago and now have a dime sized burning patch to help me remember to not touch my eyes.  So that's good...?