Revenge of the Kootenays
OCTOBER 28, 2007 - Maybe things have gotten a little too serious around here lately. Climate change can do that to a person. Plus, Alisa has a terrible flu, which I suspect she will hand off to me just as soon as we head out on the road again on November 1. In any case, well dressed with self-pity, I recently failed to muster even the energy to prepare a proper dinner. I served Alisa some leftovers - only enough for one - and, for myself, prepared a glass of tomato juice and a slice of dry cornbread.
What would give this toast a little lift? I asked myself. Then I remembered a gift jar we’d received while on tour in the fabulous Kootenay region of B.C.: it’s label reads, “Kootenay Kitchen Hot Pepper Jelly Trial (Organic).” I cracked it and spread the reddish jelly neatly across the slice of bread. It smelled sharp, and I was pleased - I usually find chili pepper jellies overly sweet and not too spicy. I was happy to be a guinea pig for the Kootenay Kitchen “trial.”
I was halfway through the toast when the heat hit. It started suddenly, at the lips, and then roared back to the throat with surprising speed. “Oh my goodness,” I said, ridiculously, and then added, “That’s quite hot.” That was the last that Alisa, flat out on the couch, would hear from me for five minutes or more. I started with a glass of cold water, which I emptied too quickly. I needed steady cold - I turned on the tap and plunged my tongue under it, but then was overwhelmed by the burning at my lips and throat. Even when I drank, the water only cooled the patch it was passing over. My throat burned as I sucked the water in, and then my lips and mouth burned when I swallowed. Tears came to my eyes, and I could feel my tastebuds actually swelling - they were like a field of ferns swept this way and that by the windstorm of a wildfire.
What is this flavour? I wondered. Cayenne peppers? Dragon peppers? Despite the pain, I smirked at the thought of so many people wondering if spicy food was still an option on a 100-mile diet. The heat was like only one other experience I’ve ever known: biting into fresh habanero peppers with a group of Mayan brush-cutters on the Yucatán Peninsula. Habanero pepper jellly?
Finally, I grabbed a bottle of local gin I’d picked up in Bend, Oregon, and filled my mouth with it. Gargled with it. The heat surged, but as I held the alcohol in, looking like a puffer fish, the flames began to subside. Hands trembling, I threw out the toast and fumbled the lid back onto the jelly jar, placing it in the refrigerator like some sacred artifact of the dark arts. I had the chili pepper high that only a severe dose can offer, and only at a price.
Kootenay Kitchen, I can confirm that your Hot Pepper Jelly is hot. It should be handled with care, by adults in full command of their faculties, and with appropriate safety gear close at hand. Perhaps it holds out hope as an alternative energy source. It should be used only for good, and never evil.
Very, very carefully, I had a little bit more for breakfast.-JBM
