Nobody Listens To Me ... Until It's Too Late

Unless this is your first time to visit my blog, you already know I have a strong aversion to veggies. Particularly green ones. If I've said it once I've said it a million times, LETTUCE IS THE DEVIL.


Go ahead snicker, laugh, say Travis is a crazy carnivore. My wife has done that very thing for years. She never heeded my warnings and very recently she paid the price for underestimating the evilness that lurks at the farmer's market. Of course me being the good guy I am, I along with some good ol' animal fat, did come to her rescue.

Let me set the scene.

Our good friends, Charlie and Cecelia were hosting a poll party. A fundraiser on behalf of the Catholic school where both My wife Jennifer and Cecelia teach. I volunteered to cook the meat (both chicken and beef fajitas) which turned out pretty danged good if I do say so myself. But I told them y'all will have to do the peppers and onions as I do not associate with such riff-raff.

Somewhere along the way the gals decided to also cook jalapeno poppers. They assigned Charlie the task of grilling the little green monsters, but first they had to prep them.

To do so my wife began scraping out the demon seeds and the guts of the jalapenos while Cecilia stuffed the hollowed innards with cream cheese and wrapped the whole shooting match in bacon. I contend it should be a crime to waste good bacon that way.



So they get the poppers finished, Charlie begins grilling them, while I mind my own business and happily grill meat.

Then it began.

THE JALAPENO HAND!

My wife washes her hand for the umpteenth time but her skin will not stop burning. The poisonous oil from the jalapeno had infiltrated her cell tissue and according to her it felt as if someone were holding an open flame to her skin.

She soaked her hand in milk.

No help.

Lime juice.

No relief.

Rubbing alcohol.

Still they burned.

Feel free to hum Johnny Cash's Ring of Fire as you read this.

The hours ticked by. The party raged on. Many bottles of wine and much beer was swallowed and still my wife hurt. Tears filled her eyes. Unshed tears but tears nonetheless.

Evening gave way to night. More booze was downed. The party-goers began surfing down the slide and doing back flips from the rock fountain. Despite inebriated swimmers doing less than intelligent stunts, my wife remained the only casualty. She sat poolside with her hands submerged in ice water. The devil's candy continued to burn five ... six ... seven hours after she'd last touched a jalapeno.

A quick trip to Google suggested toothpaste so we bid the party farewell and headed to Walgreen's. The Colgate was barely paid for when she began slathering it on her hands. The flames of hope sparkled in her eyes, but it was extinguished when the fiery pain burned on. The pharmacist said only time and repeated washing would help but it could take up to 36 hours for the capsaicin oil go away.

My wife's spirits sank. She feared there would be no sleep for her that night. At home I got in the computer and quickly learned that capsaicin pill has it's own silver bullet and wooden dagger.

I read that the oil was not water soluble, therefore a mere washing did nothing. But capsaicin is soluble by alcohol and fat. So I got out the cooking oil, which had the highest fat content of any liquid in our kitchen and some Vodka. Why Vodka? Well I didn't want to waste any rum.

So I poured the two together in a pan, the vodka and cooking oil and it made a nice clear thick liquid. I had my wife stick her mitts in, and ...

The pain immediately started to go away. The liquid quickly turned battleship gray and a tentative smile lifted the corners of Jennifer's lips. She rubbed her hands together a few times and then we dumped that batch and made a second just to get rid of the devil's juice.

She soaked her hands for fifteen minutes in that second batch and that was the last of the pain.

So despite what all the doctors say about salad being better for you than hamburgers, I single-handily proved that a meat eating carnivore, a heavy dose of fat, and a bit of Russian booze can defeat the leafy green evils of this world.

Yeah,, I'm tooting my own horn, but maybe, just maybe my wife will be now be a believer.

No need to thank me, but think of me the next time you eat a juicy hunk of meat. And if you plan to supper with Satan and his salad, please, for your sake, keep a ready supply of vodka at hand.