Yesterday, I went through one of the worst, most painful experiences of my life.  I was tricked by one of the most despicable men I know into eating this dastardly vegetable.   It was a pepper, but not just any pepper, it was a Jalapeño.  I know you might be thinking, "Oh, a jalapeno, I ate one of those when they came with my Papa John's Pizza", but I can tell you the Jalapeño when not pickled is Satan's vegetable.  When I first ate an unpickled Jalapeño, I was so vulnerable, so unaware of the excruciating pain I was about to go through.  I was blindfolded, so there was no way I could have seen it coming, and when it first entered my mouth I thought to myself, "It's just a normal pepper".  I have never been so wrong in my entire life. The pain of the heat at first was mild, but it then increased dramatically until I felt like I had a full-scale fire going on inside my mouth.  I took about 15 minutes of nonstop water penetrating my mouth until this on-fire like feeling in my mouth went away.  I really learned my lesson that day: Do NOT trust the man shown in Figure 1 with feeding you mysterious foods while you are blindfolded.

Figure 1                                                 Figure 2

                                                        

The Jalapeno is a type of vegetable that originated in the New World and was transferred to the Old World through the Columbian Exchange.  The Jalapeno pepper was used mostly by Indigenous people in the Central and Southern parts of the Americas as a spicy food of which many people in that culture enjoyed.  The picture labeled as Figure 2 is the Jalapeno pepper.