Charleston Hot Peppers!

Description: Cayenne type 5” long narrow peppers that are truly beautiful with their wide range of colors. These are VERY HOT!

Last night for dinner I made a recipe that I have made several times called Hominy Stew. It's a very good and very simple. It calls for a pepper called an Anaheim pepper. It a a long green pepper that is very mild and gives this dish a great flavor. Last week when I went to the grocery store to purchase these peppers they looked much different than they had from previous times. I have purchased these particular peppers several times before so I knew what they looked like. They look very similar to these peppers (up above) only they are the dark green color of a green pepper. Well, these peppers were in the Anaheim peppers basket at the grocery store. I picked out a couple of them and put them in the cart. I told Jarom that these peppers didn't look like the ones that I usually buy but they were in the designated basket. I thought maybe they were just a lighter color of an Anaheim pepper. I wasn't sure but they were labeled as that type of pepper (Lesson #1 Don't always believe what you read in the produce section. There is probably some 19 year old stocking produce that doesn't know an apple from an orange).

So, last night we got home from Cub Scouts and we were trying to quickly get dinner on the table. Jarom was helping cut up the ingredients for the Hominy Stew. He was working on the so called Anaheim peppers and had them pretty much cut up in to long strips to put in the soup when he started to cough. I asked him what was wrong and he said that the peppers were making him cough from the fumes that they were putting off. I went over to where he was cutting up the peppers and immediately started to do the same thing. It was then that we realized that these probably weren't Anaheim peppers that we were cutting up. I then told Jarom to taste the pepper to see if it was hot. He proceeded to cut off a small bite and put it in his mouth. Jarom touched the pepper to his tongue and immediately spit it out not even attempting to chew it saying that they were HOT! The fumes of the peppers were staring to over power the room. My eyes were starting to water and I was coughing again. I quickly dumped them into the garbage can and told Jarom to get them out of the house. He proceeded to do so. A few minutes later he came back in and told me that the pepper was still burning. A few minutes after that he came back into the kitchen and starts to rinse his mouth with water and drink some milk. All of the sudden the reaction to the pepper is getting worse. The outside of his mouth was all red, his lips were tingling, and it was burning up into his nose. Lesson #2 If a pepper smells hot. You probably shouldn't taste it. (Yes we both have post bachelors degrees).

Now it's burning him pretty bad. I don't know what to do so I tell him to put some ice on it to see if it will help with the burning. He pulls a bag of frozen carrots out of the freezer and puts it on his face (I really wanted to get a picture but he wouldn't let me). He then goes to the computer to see what type of remedy suggestions are on the Internet. There are four suggestions that we found to try. They were white vinegar, lime juice, sour cream and bleach. We pull out the white vinegar and put some on his face...nothing! Next the lime juice...still nothing. Finally I pulled out the sour cream and Jarom smears it all around is mouth and bellow his nose where it is burning...nothing again (I wanted to get a picture of this too, but he wouldn't let me). He's getting pretty desperate by now (I didn't want him to do the bleach because I didn't want it on his skin or on his face). By now we are at a complete loss. I didn't know what to do. It was all kind of funny and I couldn't help but laugh a little bit but I felt so bad because you could tell that it was really hurting him. I kept asking him; "Is it getting worse?" "Do we need to take you to the emergency room?" "Can you still breath?" Finally I suggest that he get into the shower and wash his face off really good and then take a Benadryl to see if that will help at all (by now Jarom was willing to try anything). He takes his clothes off and turns on the shower and about that time he comes out of the bathroom and says that he thinks it is getting better. The burning seemed to be subsiding some what. He still got in the shower and washed his face really good and by the time he was out he was fine (The only side effect was that the Benadryl made him sleepy).

So, the story of the impostor "Anaheim Pepper" concludes. We still don't know what really did the trick to get the burning to stop. Was it the stuff that we tried on his face or was it just a matter of time? We will never know! I'm just glad that he is okay. This morning I was curious to find out kind of pepper I had really bought and so I googled it. The Charleston Hot Pepper was the one that seemed to fit the description of the peppers I had bought (read the description at the top of this post again). I don't know if it really was the Charleston hot pepper but I do know one thing. It was not an Anaheim pepper!

Lesson #3 This is what an Anaheim pepper looks like. Do not buy anything else that may look similar to it.