Nicked

As much as I wanted to call this post chopped I equally wanted to avoid a second Cooking Channel show reference within a week despite the topic being all about related to cooking. Upon reflection, the event leading to my whine did not live up to the billing of being “chopped.”

After picking nearly a peck of unpickled fresh peppers from my garden on Saturday, I set about chopping some for the dishes I was making - chicken soup and Mexican rice. I am much the same way with peppers as the rest of the world is with bacon - everything’s better with peppers (Yes, even chocolate cake and fruit cobblers.) I can be a bit of a heat freak, but mostly, I enjoy the flavor of peppers. When you get past the idea of “oh, it burns!” the flavors in pepper make the dishes as distinct as they are.

Typical for my time cooking, I had a sports show on in the living room television that I watch from my prep station (kitchen counter). I quickly looked up to watch a purported “spectacular highlight” and I swiftly brought the knife down across the end of my fingertip, cleanly removing a chunk of nail and flesh.

I love sharp knives; the cut itself did not hurt. But in the days since, EVERYTHING that makes contact with the exposed nailless tip of my finger reminds me just how vulnerable we are when our defenses are down. Even typing - maybe especially typing - proves painful because it is my middle finger with the most popular letter on the left hand its responsibility (at least 21 poundings in this last sentence alone).

I know from experience that one must pay close attention when dealing with sharp or hot objects in the kitchen. I earned every scar on my hands and arms. Now that the surface has mostly healed and can possibly survive the flood of capsaicin from the fresh hot peppers, I need to finish preparing them for a vacuum seal that will allow me to continue using them throughout the winter months when my peppers slow production

This time I am thankful that I was only nicked as I chopped the peppers.  

And I never found the nail or the finger tip so you may want to avoid this batch of Mexican rice.

The Sting

Sunday night while doing my normal things around the house - finishing making my lunches for the week, putting the last laundry away, watching football, having a few drinks - I experienced one of the most bizarre yet hilarious events of my life.

I took a swig from my bottle of apple cider and felt something odd brush my tongue, so rather than swallow it down, I swished it about my mouth a bit to get a better feel with my tongue and determined that there was definitely something solid and pointy in my drink. Most ungracefully, I spewed my drink in a classic spit-take move across the living room floor. (It is carpet: I own a steam cleaner).

There in the middle of my spit-stream was a dark object that upon closer observation turned out to be a bee.

My roommate was sitting aghast the entire time because he had no idea what was going on and I had not said a word. Finally I looked up to him and pointed at the saturated bug, “It’s a bee! There was a bee in my drink!!!” He seemed a bit skeptical until he looked for himself. We both wondered where it had come from, the realized that due to the beautiful fall weather, the doors to the house had remained open all day.

The poor bee - it was only seeking the best sugar source before the desolation (well - desolation may be an exaggeration in central Texas) diminished pollen production of winter set in.

Just as I was feeling sorry for the poor bee, I noticed a throbbing in the roof of my mouth that suddenly grew more intense by the moment. I felt a little knob with my tongue, reached in with my finger and scraped it out to discover the stinger of the bee with the venom sack attached.

I stomped the already doomed bee.

Then I sent a tweet asking for the treatment of a bee sting on the roof of one’s mouth.

To my astonishment, a surprising number of my friends on Twitter replied. The consensus was to take a Benadryl. I did and I survived.

I learned two things from this event: 1) cover my drink whenever I have the house open on the six days a year it is possible, & 2) Twitter cures.