Rain City Life

This last Christmas, I decided to host my dad’s side of the family for Christmas Eve dinner. I had to work on Christmas Eve so the night before I decided to start preparing as much of the food as I could before I had to rush home and get everything started before people came over at 6. As an appetizer I decided to prepare jalepeno artichoke dip and serve with french bread for dipping. DELICIOUS, fatty and overall pretty easy to do. There was just some chopping to do.

I finally finished all of my prep about 1030 that night. Weary and ready for sleep, I went to the bathroom to brush my teeth and get ready for bed. After washing my face and hands, I noticed a slight burning sensation on my hands. It was a dull, throbbing pain that only felt better after running them under cold water. But the second they were dry. It was all over.

The jalepenos. I had burned my hands chopping them up for the dip!

Unsure of what to do, I washed my hands with soap and water multiple times trying to “wash away” the juice or whatever the hell was causing so much pain. I was just standing there trying to figure out what to do when I figured I should continue getting ready for bed and bear it. It would go away soon enough and then I could get some sleep. So then – I took out my contact.

I’m not entirely sure why it didn’t occur to me that sticking my fingers in my eye would cause great pain but well, it just didn’t. Judge me all you want but it was late, I was stressed and I was tired. I had work in the morning and for some unknown reason to me, hosting my family for Christmas Eve dinner caused me great stress.

Needless to say I stood in the bathroom for another few minutes while I threw water into my eye and prayed I wouldn’t go blind. Eventually the pain went away and I was left with one contact in my eye and no idea how to get it out. Sleeping in my contacts is not comfortable at all and I was desperate to get it out so I could just go to bed and cry myself to sleep. After discussing ways my non contact wearing perfect 20/20 vision boyfriend could try to take it out for me – I decided it was less risky to just do it myself – jalepeno hands and all.

This time was quick. I was aware of the situation and it burned for only a minute. Total win at that point.

At some point during this entire debacle, Matt had grabbed half and half as well as whipped cream in a can from our fridge. They brought me relief, but unfortunately, only temporary. I went to bed with still a slight burning sensation and delicious smelling hands.

As you can imagine, I couldn’t sleep. Twice I would be about to doze off only to be rudely awaken by the total pain I was experiencing. I kept getting up to dunk my hands in milk for the relief and after my third time Matt politely asked me to just sit on the couch and watch TV saying I could always call in sick the next day. He, however, could not.

Point taken. I took to watching late night TV and attempting to look up at home healing recipes while I alternated soaking each hand in a bowl of milk. Finally, I found that if you were to make a sugar scrub with milk and rub it all over your hands, it was supposed to take the pain away. While scrubbing sugar on my hands was very painful, the scrub did in fact work. Finally, around 230 in the morning, I was able to go to bed. The next morning there was still a dull pain there after washing my hands so I sent a very humorous email to work detailing why I would be unable to make it in.

A few weeks ago I was looking through Pinterest and found a Chicken Avocado Lime soup I wanted to try. Even though it’s August and has been a pretty warm summer, I had to have it. When it comes to chicken, lime or avocado, I’m totally on board.

Here’s the recipe:

http://www.cookingclassy.com/2014/07/chicken-avocado-lime-soup/#comment-256767

While I was cooking I realized the soup called for diced jalepenos. Remembering my episode during Christmas, I wondered how I would ensure that the same thing didn’t happen again. I needed gloves. Gardening gloves? Luckily, Matt remembered the gloves I had received from my coworkers as a parting gift on my last day of work – right before I found out my classes were canceled.

Genius! So I put them on and all was well!

 

The final product.

 

The soup was delicious and I’m so happy to finally be smarter than the jalenpeno. Let this be a lesson – never cut jalepenos without gloves.