“What kind of peppers do you
think they are?” Elliot asked. His grandparents had sent some small,
apparently quite spicy, peppers our way.
They sat in a plastic baggy, all five of them, looking mildly back at
us, hiding their true nature inside their yellow skins.
“Google will tell me,” I said
and snapped a picture and quickly Google informed of the answer.
“Elliot, do you know why the
pepper couldn’t hit the target?”
“Does this have anything to do
with these peppers?” Elliot was not
buying my Dad joke sensibility.
“Because it didn’t Hab-a-nero!” I said.
“That’s not the way Spanish
speaking people say it,” he said, critically.
“They don’t pronounce the “Hs” in their words.”
“Maybe it’s a cockney dad joke,”
I said. “Anyway, these are Habanero
Peppers – whether or not you pronounce the H.”
It was at this point that
Elliot got his bright idea. “I’m going
to make my own hot sauce!” He said. “These Habaneros will be perfect to start
that!”
“There are a few Jalapenos in
the fridge too,” his mother put in. “You
can use those too if you want.”
And so began the quest for hot
sauce. Elliot quickly found an online
recipe. “The only thing is that it says
you should wear a respirator if you are going to make this,” he said.
“Maybe that’s why Darth Vader
wears one,” I said. “He seems like a big
hot sauce sort of fellow. I’m sure when
he isn’t force choking soldiers, he’s in the kitchen whipping up his latest
spicy concoction. You’ll have to make do
with the hood on over the stove. Hopefully
that will take away the worst of the fumes.”
Elliot began working on his hot
sauce. He was careful to wear gloves and
got all of his ingredients diced up well and put them on the stove top to cook
together. It was about this time that I
heard him begin to cough and I came downstairs to investigate.
The air was thick with
capsaicin. It really did get into your
throat and irritated it and you couldn’t help but cough at regular
intervals. For some reason, Elliot hadn’t
turned on the vent above the stove and once he did this, things got a little
better, but for the rest of the evening if you went anywhere near the kitchen,
you would start to get choked up.
Of course, hot sauce is one of
those things where a little bit goes a long way. A few drops are good; a cup is
overwhelming. When it is aerosolized, it
makes you realize how easy it is for viruses to float on the air just waiting
for an unsuspecting soul to inhale them and begin a journey towards mucus
production.
There are other things in life
where too much is not beneficial. Wealth
is one of those things. Proverbs tells
us, “Better a little with the fear of the Lord than great wealth with turmoil.”
(Proverbs 15:16)
The point is not that severe
poverty is beneficial to anyone – clearly it isn’t, but the pursuit of wealth
brings with it chaos and turmoil.
Choosing instead to pursue other things and to give generously with what
we do have is the solution.
Just a small amount of hot
sauce is needed to bring out the flavor of a taco. In much the same way, a small amount of
wealth with a large dose of contentment is what is needed to bring
satisfaction, while the reverse will only bring a life of turmoil.