how to cook (when you're me)

I am a grown-up with a house and a child.  But somehow, today, a try at a new recipe spiraled downward into me stuffing cheese up my nose.

I'll start at the beginning.  I was trying a recipe for low carb jalapeno poppers.  It calls for jalapenos, cream cheese, and bacon wrapped around the outside.  Sounds good, right?  I've never done anything with actual jalapenos, but three ingredients--how hard could it be?

Well.  

The recipe said to scrape out the seeds because that's where the heat is.  I was wondering how hard I needed to scrape... did I have enough of the heat out?  I touched my tongue to one of the peppers.  HOT!  I took a quick drink of milk to cool my mouth, and did some more scraping.  

Then something horrible happened, though I didn't know it yet.  I scratched my nose.

It felt hot, then hotter, then hotter.  So I rubbed it some more.

Heat explosion.  By this time, I realized that I must be spreading jalapeno heat with my hands, so I decided to try to put on rubber gloves.  My eyes were watering and my nose was running and the heat was intensifying, and I just kept working at those gloves!  Why?!  Finally, I realized that I had my pinky and thumb spots reversed and was trying to put them on backwards.  I also realized that I was far beyond gloving up and trying to keep working on these.

I was desperate, heat spreading up my nose.  I had vague fears of the heat rising and burning out my eyes... I opened the fridge and tried to think of something milk-like that could possibly take the heat our of my nose.  I saw Colby cheese first, so I rolled some up and stuffed it up my nose.  It provided a bit of relief, but not enough.  I called my brother, panicked and crying.  Our conversation, shouted over speakerphone, went a little like this:

me:  I need your help!  I touched jalapenos and then my nose and now it's burning so much and I'm in a lot of pain.  What do I do???

J: (laughter)  Um, maybe some milk?

me:  Okay, I'll try.  (I poured milk into a cup and tried to angle myself over the sink to pour milk into my nose.)  Agg!! It's not working!!  I can't get the angle right!  (total desperation)  I can't get the milk in my nose!!

J:  Anything milk based would help.

me:  I tried cheese, but it doesn't help.

J:  What kind?  (PS.  Why does this matter??)

me:  Colby!

J:  (laughter)  (laughter)  You put Colby cheese up your nose? (laughter)

me:  Yes, and it doesn't help!  What do I do???

J:  Try some butter.

me:  (I grabbed butter, whimpering and blubbering, cut off a chunk, broke it in half, and shoved each half into my nostrils).  Ahh.  I think that's better.  Yeah, that's helping.

J:  Did you rub it around your nose?

me:  I shoved it in.  (finally the burning is subsiding enough that i can see that this is funny.  I giggle, which shoots the butter pats out of my nose into the sink.  I reach for more butter.)

J:  (laughter) (vague sounds of him repeating all this to Rachel)  (laughter)

So... if I were to write a cookbook, the recipes would go something like this:

Jalepeno Poppers (low carb, high heat)

Ingredients:

bacon

cream cheese

jalepenos

Colby cheese, rolled (for nose)

dash of milk (for attempts to extinguish nasal fire)

large pat of butter (divided) (one part for each nostril)

tea towel (to wave at the smoke detector when it goes off)  *which did indeed happen today, when I finally got those bad boys into the oven

I. can't. even. with this nonsense that is my life :)