Jalapeno NO-NO!!

Okay people, I'm finally recovered enough to write this post after the events that unfolded last Friday night. I was making dinner and decided to make my own salsa (I have a great recipe, SUPER easy), and I bought a fresh jalapeño to spice it up a little. So I'm my kitchen, cooking, loving life, I cut open the pepper, scrape out the seeds with my fingers and chop it up. Everything was totally fine, plus, I had worked with jalapeños before so I thought I knew what I was doing.

BOY.WAS.I.WRONG.

About a half an hour later my thumb and index finger on my right hand started burning horribly. I'm talking about the most horrible burning stinging I've ever felt in my life. I had been burned. Burned real bad. I committed the first NO-NO of pepper cutting -- scraping out the seeds with my bare hands.

The pain was unbearable so I googled for some help and found a couple sites with some home remedies. Basically, there is no cure, remedy, relief or any magic spell that will make it stop -- only the magic of time -- and we all know that time takes FOREVER.

Here is the list of things I tried soaking my fingers in:

1. tomato sauce
2. tomato juice
3. tomato puree
4. vinegar
5. milk
6. water
7. ice water
8. milk and vinegar
9. bleach
10. alcohol

Nothing helped. My fingers felt alright when they were in the various substances, but as soon as they were out I wanted to just chop them off. Because capsicum (the chemical in peppers that gives them their heat) is an oil, it basically seeped into my skin for a long vacation. It even ate away at my skin (or that could have been the bleach and the alcohol).

Anyway, I'm over it now. But BE WARNED!!!!!!! Just buy the stinkin' things in a can and save yourself the trouble. This is what I get for trying to be the world-class chef that I am not.