I’ve had my fair share of experiences with peppers: Bell pepper, cayenne, tabasco, jalapeño, habanero, ghost, and Carolina reaper.
I discovered a new pepper in Mexico. The Mexican tomato.
Yeah. And it is put in everything. Several of the things I ate had the deep, rich redness of a midsummer vine-ripened, straight from the garden tomato. I’m convinced that the Mexican tomato is the worst pepper to ever exist.
Someone said, “This no heat.”
I said, “You lie.”
Okay, I didn’t say that out loud.
The only difference in Mexico is that they lie, and you fry. “Es no heat, Señor,” is what you hear right before you become close friends with a white ceramic bowl in a tiny closet.
The truth is, I was given sage advice, “No heat, some heat, and burn a hole straight through to your shoe sole heat.”
Having married a lady who was raised in Mexico and having eaten her authentic Mexican cooking, I decided I had ingested enough of the Mexican spices that I could handle their offerings of what I now know as “white phosphorus perpetual colonoscopy salsa.”
Boy, I was wrong. But thankfully, I no longer have possession of that gum I swallowed when I was seven.
I’m still having issues. I’ve drank gallons of milk, eaten a bottle of Tums, slurped and shoveled tubs of yogurt, and sipped the nasty pink slime Proctor and Gamble call Pepto-Bismol.
Sunday evening, I ventured out to a local hole-in-the-wall grocery store. I found a quart of whole milk in the glass door fridge. I gave the lady at the makeshift counter my pesos. I returned to the parsonage with my whole milk in a yellow plastic bag.
The pastor saw me take a sip of the white, creamy, stomach-soothing nectar from across the yard.
He yelled out in his heavily accented, broken English for everyone to hear, “Caleb! MILK IS FOR BABIES!” And then he laughed his proverbial head off.
I walked over to him, stuck out my hand, and he clasped his hand in mine in a firm handshake.
I said, “Hello. My name is Bebés.”
Friends, no American can withstand three days of the Mexican tomato. It’s the worst pepper known to mankind.
In closing, I feel like I must apologize to whoever manages that town’s septic system. But at least you will have no shortage of work for the next few years. I did what I could to strengthen the Mexican economy. At least, that’s what I’ll tell myself to feel better.
to the future economic “boom” in Mexico,
– Caleb
caneymountainblog.com 