I used to like my chili hot.

I have always enjoyed the flavors and spices of a good slow cooked Chili.  Beans and meat, tomatoes and spices; pair that up with some warm cornbread, a touch of molasses to soak into the bread, and a glass of cold milk...that is as good as eatin’ gets as far as I am concerned.  Always has been, hope it always will be.

When mom made chili for a meal back at home, she served it up in large bowls, and right in front of my place she always placed a big can of Shilling’s Chili Powder.  Chili, garlic, salt, and a mess of other things I expect.  Cause Mom knew I liked my chili hot, way too hot for the rest of the family.  In fact I would stir more added seasoning into my bowl than mom had used in the whole pot.

Best chili I ever had? Easy, some venison meat chili made by Mrs Luce, friends of my parents.  Back when I was maybe 9 or 10.

Hottest chili I ever had? Also easy; I started cooking at a young age, and by the time I had moved out on my own I was full on experimenting with my foods.  Didn’t follow any recipes then, just made it up as I went and added to it a little at a time.  

Chili was one of the first things I worked up. 

Over a number of months I perfected my own chili recipe.  Rich and flavorful, used Italian sausage and ground beef for the meat, tomato base simmered way down.  Fresh garlic, black pepper, salt, a bit of fresh oregano, and 35 hand chopped dried Birds Eye Chili pods.

The heat didn’t hit you immediately, lots of spicy flavor, but not caustic, until a bit after you swallowed.  Then the heat kicked in and had you looking for a cool drink.  Never had a problem with my stomach, no heartburn, acid reflux, whatever.  Just a solid warming food.

My wife convinced me to write the recipe down one time so she could take it to work and share it.  None of her co-workers were willing to make it for fear of melting down their pots.

Yep, I was pretty happy with that recipe. 

Then one day when eating lunch at a Chinese restaurant, I came to know Birds Eye chili better than ever. 

I had ordered a nice spicy Szechuan dish.  My plate came to the table, aromatic, hot, and tasty.  Arrayed across the top of the meat and vegetables were 6 Bird’s Eye dried chili pods.  Looking close I could see a number of diced bits of chili pod mixed throughout the dish as well.  The ones on top were there mostly for decoration.  Oh, and maybe for the more cast iron among us to take one at a time for a bite with just a little extra blaze.

Although I didn’t know this then, dried Bird’s Eye Chili line up right around 325,000 Scovile units each.  That means that each one of those 6 dried chili on the top was equal to about 130 Jalapeno for those of you who also need a bit of reference.

As was my habit, then and now, I had a book with me to read while chowing down.  I’ve lived all my life with too many interests and too little time.  So reading while I ate lunch became an early habit for me.

I thought I was carefully filling each forkful, moving those dried chili off to the side as the rest of the seasoning was actually pretty dead on and good.  I was working up a nice light sweat.  You know, the kind that makes your forehead feel just a touch cool.

Long about the end of the plate, fully engrossed in what I was reading, I messed up on that carefully filling the fork part.  Chomped down and felt a change in texture.  Looked away from the book and to the plate and noticed that only 2 of the chili remained.

Now, having cooked with those things, I knew they ran pretty hot.  But being young and prideful, I figured it wouldn’t be anything I couldn’t handle.  In a way I was right.

But trust me on this, I don’t ever want to “handle” that again.

So, instead of spitting them out onto the fork, I just chewed away.  And truth be told, that chewing helped to reinforce my foolish belief that this was not going to be too bad.  I mean, hey, if you can chew it and it doesn’t burn…it must be okay to swallow, right?

Wrong!!!

Literally less than a quarter of a second after I swallowed I realized I had made a very, very serious mistake.

Back to that Jalapeno reference; I had in essence chewed up and eaten 520 jalapeno peppers.  All in a single swallow.

Now, it really didn’t burn, or at least, I didn’t feel that.

Could be because my heart rate had immediately gone sky high; 200 beats a minute if not more.  Full on, “ran the marathon and was chased across the finish line by a large pack of cheetahs that couldn’t quite keep up” mode; Bruising the inside of my rib cage level of hammering.  I wondered if my heart was going to explode.  No, really, I don’t mean that figuratively, I really thought it was going to explode.

And that in itself would not have been a problem if it wasn’t for the gallons of sweat that were literally sheeting off of my forehead and running into my eyes, dripping off of my nose.  Right at the table, in the middle of lunchtime, at the height of the noontime crowd.

Now, you would think that all that salt sweat in the eyes would have hurt.  And maybe it did.  But at that moment I was too busy trying not to gag and throw up.  No use messing up everyone else’s nice lunch just because I had screwed up mine.  Figured I had better get to the bathroom and started to stand up.

Just about one second after swallowing and right as I was standing up, my vision faded out.  Kinda like at the end of the Bugs Bunny cartoon, you know, when everything is rapidly narrowed within a field of black coming from the outside edges and narrowing to a tighter and tighter circle until the entire view just slams shut.  Never have I experienced anything like it.  Found out after the fact that when your blood pressure goes through the roof, not only does it pop the mercury out of the sphygmomanometer, the excessive pressure squeezes the optic nerve until it can’t transmit “pictures” to your brain any longer.

Blind, sweating, gagging, I felt my way to the men’s room (thankfully a small restaurant that I frequented regularly.

There, I ran water and splashed it on my face, hung on death-gripped to the sink, focused tirelessly on not spewing all over the bathroom, and wishing fervently to be able to see again someday in the distant future.

All in all my vision was blacked out for several minutes, my heart ran the equivalent of three “Iron-mans”, and my stomach muscles were exhausted before the effects of that forkful began to subside.

And while you might think being blind, bruised inside, and sore were the worst of it, it wasn’t.  And no, it’s not what you are thinking.  That wasn’t an issue at all.

Nope, worst of it is, I can barely tolerate “medium” salsa these days, and that great chili recipe that I created?

Haven’t even considered making it since.

©2015 Marty Vandermolen, All Rights Reserved