Eric came home from work tonight flushed and energized. Roone had brought in a package of ghost peppers, supposedly the hottest pepper in the world.
The boys sampled a small piece, turned bright red, sweated, and cried. When they had finally recovered, they shared their new toy with some customers, who were transformed from hearty men into drooling weep-bags after 30 seconds.
That little turd-looking thing to the left there is a ghost pepper. My interest in sampling it is hovering around negative 9,012, especially after hearing Eric's description, and double especially after watching this video (the pepper tonight was dried and so not quite as potent).
If I sound a little grumpy about this, it's because Roone and Eric have been driving me crazy for over a decade with their longstanding heat war*, wherein they try to outdo each other with spicy food. I have spent many otherwise lovely meals rolling my eyes because those two were staring each other down with hot-pink, watery eyes as they hiccuped violently and dripped all over their quadruple-chili Thai food.
Tonight, though is going to force a truce, for how can you top the hottest pepper in the world? (Two hottest peppers in the world? Oh, please, god, no.)
Here, have a nice, cooling picture of catfish at the Asian grocery as an antidote! They are all doomed.
*Still infinitely better than their old fart wars. They would each eat huge servings of beans, peppers, onions, and cabbage before they worked a shift together, then come home and regale me with competing versions of how they "got" each other.