¡Ay, Caramba! – Guest Post

With a crazy busy weekend filled with…

• What felt like 18-million birthdays (it is officially clear to me that women are quite randy in January – cold weather will do that to you?)
• Filming and editing multiple shows (new GiGi Eats next week, with a NEW guest! Oh and a BRAND NEW SHOW… HERE!)
• School work (yep, back to school I go, for my certification in Nutrition from Tufts University)
• The Emmy’s (I had to vacuum the red carpet)
  

Dr. J of CalorieLab.com Fame (among other things), SWOOPED IN like Superman, ready to save the day, by offering up a guest post!

In Dr. J’s musing, he proves that karma can be a bi***! Maybe that’s why he so generously offered up a guest post?

When GiGi asked for guest writers for her site I was hoping that she would find my musing GiGi-worthy! It seems that neither of us have Mexican food on the top of our favorites list, although I do think she could do a fabulous Carmen Miranda in her entertaining videos. I still want to share a story about an integral Mexican food ingredient for those that like it , the very hot and spicy jalapeño pepper!  Studies have supported that eating capsaicin containing foods, the chemical that puts the capital “H” in Hot, does seem to help prevent weight regain and may aid in weight loss. 

It all started many years ago when a young and very dumb master J was off at summer camp. At the camp, there was a young man who for whatever unknown reasons kids have to be cruel, was the target of everyone’s nastiness, and I was no exception. 

I don’t think my higher brain functions were fully developed at this unfortunate point in my life, but somehow I got an idea to play, what I thought at the time would be a joke, on this innocent kid. I got a hold of some black pepper from the camp dining room, placed some in the palm of my hand and said to the kid, “look what I have!” He walked over and was looking at the pepper when I blew on my hand sending enough of it into his face that instead of making him sneeze, it went into his eyes and caused him to scream in pain!

He had to spend the next few days in the camp infirmary and I was given a very stern talking to by the camp leaders!

You may be asking yourself at this point, besides the obvious why questions, what this has to do with jalapeño peppers. 

I’m getting to that.

So over the succeeding years, I reflected on what I had done to this boy, and I always felt guilty for my thoughtless and cruel actions. Really the guilt never went away, and I would always feel terrible for doing this. It’s interesting what stays with us from the millions of memories we accumulate in life why some things never go away and are always remembered. I don’t have that many regrets in my life, but I regret that lack of kindness, regardless of my lack of awareness due to age, to this day. 

Are you still wondering about the jalapeños? 

So one day, a few years ago, I’m in the kitchen making, a rare for me, Mexican meal. As I was carefully cutting up this large, very hot, jalapeño pepper, as the karmic clock struck 12, I made the fatal stroke and with that knife slice a seed from the pepper went straight into my eye!

The pain was well beyond anything I had ever experienced! Water in the eye only made it worse. How am I going to drive to the Emergency Room? What am I going to do? My mind was caught in a Mobius strip of pain with no apparent way out!

After about 10 minutes of this, the pain started to diminish, and eventually it was gone. My eye looked like a big red hot house tomato, but I still had normal vision. I read about capsaicin and discovered (in life we learn about things we never wanted to learn about) that it causes no physical damage whatsoever, only PAIN! (Something that I suspect any FBI or CIA agent already knows.)  And at least now, I won’t need to have that Lasik procedure done!

Which brings us back to that kid at camp and my terrible pepper joke, because just like that, I realized that, although I still had the regret, I no longer felt the oppressive guilt for doing what I did so long ago. I felt that I had gotten what I deserved and felt a calmness and acceptance of what goes around comes around.