Mystery Peppers are NOT to be Trifled With

End of Day 25

Vitals:  It was foggy and rainy here all day.  The fog was so thick, we could only see about three feet past our window.  I’ve rarely seen fog this thick!   We stayed home and caught up on school.  We didn’t hear anything from Nadya, but she mentioned that it would probably be tomorrow or Friday to sign Roman’s papers.  The heaters worked all day.  All is well.

Not So Vital:  So, today, the topic must be food.  You’ll understand in a few paragraphs.  For those of you who don’t frequent Facebook  (Hi Granny!)  here is my post from a few days ago:   You have THESE fresh veggies: carrots, potatoes, peppers, cabbage, onion and garlic. You have meat: chicken, ground beef, or pork. NO spices beyond salt and pepper, NO herbs beyond parsley and dill. No tomato sauce beyond generic ketchup. One 9 inch skillett, One 5 inch sauce pan. Four children, one who is lactose intolerant. Your mission, should you chose to accept it, is to tell me what's for dinner.

And, that pretty much sums up our meal times here.  I had no idea how limited our choices would be.  But, let me tell you, if you want to know if you are a good cook, come to Ukraine for a few weeks.  It’s a do or die kind of country.    My mom was great about making a good variety of meals for us and I have the same habit. I hate repeats.  One of the really hard things about being here for me is the All Recipes feed that comes to my inbox every day.  I don't have the ingredients to make their stuff any more!  Nevertheless, last night was Chicken ala king, which I thought was pretty creative, (had to make toast in the skillet) but when I set down a bowl of carrots next to it, my 13 year old son said, "You know Mom, they gave the pilots in WWII so many carrots, you could pick them out of a crowd because they were orange.”  --I told him it's no wonder everyone is staring at him.

All this is to say that the story I am about to tell is NOT MY FAULT. Circumstances drove me to it. 

Since the known choices are SO limited, we have been trying to make the best of it and buy a lot of “mystery foods.”  For example, this last shopping trip I bought four mystery breads: one stuffed with dill (I’m telling you, it’s the ONLY herb in the country), one whole wheat loaf stuffed with onion (rather unfortunate choice), one cake that had chocolate chips and another that turned out to be just pound cake, but I was three out of four, which isn’t bad.  I did the same thing with vegetables.  Besides the Fantastic Four (carrots, cabbage, potatoes, onion) there were some mystery peppers in the produce section on Sunday.  So, I grabbed a few.  It should be noted here that Reilly told me not to buy them. However, I felt I had no choice.  Why else are we here but to dive into a new culture?  Besides, as I told her, this is UKRAINE.  They have no other spices besides SALT.  How hot can their peppers be?

Now that I have a big pot, and since it was cold and rainy outside, I decided that this was a good day for beef stew.  I cut up the meat early and got it cooking.  A few hours later, I added the carrots, potatoes and onion. … This is when I realized it was going to taste just like every other meal that we have had since day one.  Carrots, potatoes, onion; carrots, potatoes, onion…so, I diced up some cabbage and threw that in and when that didn’t look all that inspiring, I got out a new pepper and diced it nice and small.  I knew it was probably a hot pepper, so I was making strips about 1/8 of an inch thick.  I decided to taste a strip before I threw too much in and that is when the day took an educational turn.  That pepper was easily the HOTTEST thing I have EVER put in my mouth.  OH MY GOODNESS.  I spit it out right away, so it only hit the tip of my tongue, but somehow some of the pepper stuff got on my lips.  They were on FIRE!  I started rinsing my face, but it made NO difference!  Then I went for an ice cube, but my kids had been munching on them all day and there were none, only empty trays!!  My next thought was soap and water.  Reilly saw me discreetly tearing toward the bathroom and followed after me to see what was up. 

I put my head in the bathroom sink thinking I could wash the stuff off.  I kept washing and rinsing and washing and rinsing.  All the time, my lips were on FIRE.  As I was searching my memory for any information I had logged about chemical burns and imagining myself with a red goatee for our court date on Friday, Reilly put the dots together and mentioned sweetly that she HAD WARNED ME not to buy those peppers.   Meanwhile,  the soap and water were NOT WORKING.  Every time I washed my face, the circle of burning skin only got bigger and bigger.   All I was doing was spreading the stuff around.   I glanced in the mirror and noticed that, since my face was a bit swollen, a lot of the wrinkles had disappeared.  Also, my lips were finally red again.  I had to wonder if this is what a “chemical peel” is like in a health spa. Should I spread the stuff around a little and hope for the best?  But no.  NO beauty could be worth this kind of pain.  I finished with the last rinse and headed back to the fridge, hoping to find something cold to put on my face.  I finally remembered that I had a bag of onions in the freezer and spent the next ten minutes pacing the apartment, dabbing my face and lips with frigid produce.  My children took turns following me around and asking a fixed set of questions that always ended with, “Reilly told you not to buy those.  Why did you buy them?”  All I could do was shift my onion pack and mumble in their general direction.  At least ten minutes had passed and my face still hurt every bit as bad as when I first tasted those things.  Good Grief!!

I finally got on line to see if I could find some sort of home remedy.  I did a search on “pepper, burn, remedy” and started clicking around.  Here is what I found out:  Lots of people get burns from peppers.  Apparently nothing works, but, here’s what you can try if you are really desperate and too cheap to go to the emergency room (which is where you belong):  Aloe Vera (didn’t have any), alcohol (didn’t have any), milk of magnesia (didn’t have any), baking soda (didn’t have any), Benadryl (didn’t have any), milk (didn't h....oh wait...that I had!)  I put my head back into the bowl of the sink and started washing my face and lips with milk.  All the milk here tastes warm, even if it is ICE COLD.  It also has that warm smell to it.  It’s kind of nasty, but I didn’t care at that point.  All I wanted was for my lips to stop hurting.  It spilled all over, and after the tenth rinse,, I smelled just like I did when I was breastfeeding.  But, eventually it started working.  I felt better.    

Bill came home from his evening run and all the kids ran straight to the front door to tell him the news.  He was kind enough to mention my red goatee, just in case I thought it was fading.  The next time I looked at the clock, it was 5:39.  My face felt better, but I noticed that my fingers were burning. It took another two hours for my fingers to stop hurting.  I tried milk, buttermilk, ice cream and the dessert cream, but nothing worked.  I finally went back to plan A and just kept rotating cold things to carry in my right hand.  Bill told the boys to do the dishes for me, but about half way through, I realized that was a mistake.  I took over the job and by the time the dishes were done, my hands felt better.  

For the record, I gathered up the slices of pepper and the other whole one that was in the fridge and threw them out.  Apparently there are SOME Ukrainians SOMEWHERE who eat more than the Fantastic Four.  As for us, we are now back to carrots, cabbage, potatoes, and onions.