Reflection is another type of blog post that I will be using to broaden my blog entries. Unlike glimmers, reflections are going to be based upon nostalgic moments that I recently had in my life or in my past. I derive my reflection from events that have taught me lessons along the way compared to a glimmer being an inspirational thought that can have philosophical connotations.
Nevertheless, I hope that a reflection can be a way to either teach you something; think about something differently; or help a reader be nostalgic with me. I find that writing things out both calms me and helps me grow as a person.
This past week, I learned a fun fact as I was visiting a burrito fast - food joint. In this restaurant while I was on my lunch break, I was glancing around the restaurant reading about healthy, nutritious ways that the ingredients in burritos help people live healthy. One fun ("hot") fact caught my eye which stated, "Capsaicins, which is the chemical compound found in spicy foods, and what cause the spicy sensation, can inhibit cancer cells".
As I was masticating on my scrumptious burrito a grin came across my face regarding the first time I chewed on a spicy green chile pepper. The story happened when I was about nine years old when my family was visiting Sacramento, California. One of my relatives had cooked my favorite Filipino dish, Dinuguan, when translated into English, is Bloody - Pork. It is meat innards cooked in a pork's blood. Here is a picture on the right.
In fact, it is my favorite Filipino dish. I have had it for breakfast, lunch and dinner for FIVE days straight at another relative's house. I love this dish that much. Some of you might be queasy right now, but you wouldn't understand what you're missing. But, that is another story for another time.Anyways, we are back in Sacramento, California. I am a naive, nine - year old eating my dish. I say naive, because the way my mother cooks this dish is without green chile peppers. Now, my aunt who lives in Sacramento does cook this dish with green chile peppers. Upon seeing the green chile pepper, I thought it was a green bell pepper that wasn't going to be spicy. So, without thought, I took a bite of the entire green chile pepper. The figure on the left is exactly what the pepper looked like in texture.
Let me be clear, there are different types of Green Chile Peppers. A common Green Pepper, The New Mexico Green Chile Pepper, has a Scoville Heat Scale Ranking between 350 to 30,000 units (Scoville Scale is used to rank the intensity of spice). Though I didn't know what type of Green Chile I placed into my mouth, I can take a guess that it must have been a New Mexico Green Chile Pepper seeing that it did feel like my mouth was on fire the moment I chewed on it. Since I was young, and naive, I think this was the first time I had placed something spicy into my mouth. The moment I chewed upon that pepper, the juices oozed pain that simultaneously lit my tongue on fire with my ears fuming smoke. I screamed, running around the house like an idiotic, crazed mad - man screaming "MY MOUTH IS ON FIRE". As hilarious as it is to think about this story now, it was excruciating to think about it during that moment.
Both my aunt and my mother looked at me wondering why I was screaming. It took them a moment until they realized that I had just eaten a pepper. Immediately, they rushed towards me with a glass of water.
Again, naively, it only increased the pain. Now I was covering my ears while I was screaming around the house uttering the same words that I was screaming already. The heat felt unbearable that I could hardly contain both my screaming and crying. Again, my family rushed towards me with a glass of water. And, again the pain worsened. I just wasn't getting it.
Scientifically, the reason why water isn't going to help with spiciness is because water only spreads the Capsaicin oils around the mouth making those oils "bind" towards your tongue. The only proven method to remove those oils in your mouth is anything with dairy products. However, I didn't know this fact.
It took almost an hour until my mouth finally calmed down. After that incident, I vowed I would never eat another chile pepper or eat anything spicy. But, lo and behold I have done other stupid, spicy challenges such as: taking drops of the world's hottest - hot sauce and the Buffalo Wild Wings Spicy Wing Challenge. Both were stupid feats both done on a dare. I will tell you that the world's hottest - hot sauce instructs a person to only place a drop of it into chili because that is all the heat it needs. However, when I was dared to take a drop, I "accidentally" dropped more than five drops onto my tongue causing a heat that can only be described as diabolical. In fact, there wasn't any words that could describe that amount of pain. That pain wasn't compared to Buffalo Wild Wings as it was more embarrassing than painful. After I had completed my Buffalo Wild Wings challenge, my nose was bleeding and I visited the bathroom more than FIVE times that day. In fact, I don't think I ever left more than five feet from a bathroom toilet that day. The after effects of B-dubs was more painful than eating the wings themselves.
As I am typing these memories up, I am smirking at myself because I am wondering if I had learned my lesson. May be not, but the lesson that I hadn't known at that time was all those spicy food challenges was actually improving my health by inhibiting cancer cells.
I guess the take away that I had learned from all my spicy food challenges was there was some good that came out of it even though they were bad for me during that time. Applying this towards life, sometimes the bad things that happen in our lives can provide us the most benefit. Though we might not see it during that time, we will see it later.
Someday, like me, you might be eating a burrito reading: "Capsaicins, which is the chemical compound found in spicy foods, and what cause the spicy sensation, can inhibit cancer cells". Then, and only then, can you say may be I did learn something valuable from my bad choices. Choices that start with not knowing how capaicin can be beneficial to your health.
That is my reflection.
No comments:
Post a Comment