Jalapeno Burn

I had been wondering what to do with the jalapenos I’d picked at my farmshare. I love going to the green leafy plants and looking for the curvy, long and slender green or red growth that will spice up my food. I saw online that peppers can be sliced and seeded, then frozen. So I decided to do that before leaving town yesterday.

I did pause momentarily as I was working, wondering whether the peppers were going to affect me adversely. But I hadn’t heard I needed to do anything special, so I continued on.

A while after I finished, my hands started to tingle, and then certain areas (near my fingernail, my thumbs, my pinkies) began to burn. I did a quick google and read about people rolling around on the floor and going to the emergency room from intense pain. Milk seemed like the most commonly suggested remedy, so I bathed my hands in 2% organic milk. The cold, thick liquid felt good on my hands, but it seemed an unfortunate waste of the expensive milk.

The milk seemed to work until I took a shower. Then the burning began a new, with more intensity than before. I gave my hands another milk bath, and followed it by dripping some lemon juice over the burns, since I’d read lemon juice could also be helpful. No luck.

When we got out to the car and I typed an address into the GPS, it felt like the GPS device was on fire. Mark had wanted me to drive half of the five hours it would take to get to our hotel and I knew I couldn’t do it if it felt like the steering wheel was burning. So he stopped at a pharmacy and bought me some benadryl. That worked fast at relieving the burning sensation.

I learned my lesson – I need to buy some plastic gloves and put them on anytime I’m working with jalapenos.