More Randomness OR How I Was at a Loss For What to Write OR Those Funky Jalapenos, What Will They Do Next?

Well, I'll just say that random thoughts will be ensuing in this blog.  I will jump from topic to topic in a fashion that will leave most readers annoyed or breathless or possibly both.

Okay, jalapenos have been on my mind.  Yesterday was chicken and sausage gumbo day.  I chopped of the vegetables.  I made a roux.  I boiled up a whole chicken and saved the broth for the gumbo.  I even used peppers from our own garden.  (The pumpkin leaves finally cleared enough for the pepper plants to grow and apparently we have a buttload of jalapenos.  Lots n lots n lots of jalapenos.)  And dang, that gumbo was good.

But what in the name of Jiminy Cricket am I going to do with all those other jalapenos?  (I will remind anyone who has previously read my blog that it was NOT my idea to grow three different packets of varied pepper seeds in a minuscule garden.)  Salsa comes to mind.  There's also a recipe I saw for little jalapeno dippers.  (It's got cream cheese in the middle of a sliced jalapeno and is wrapped in bacon.  Sounds like one of my arteries just instantaneously clogged up.)

I wasn't going to add captions but it seems like I should
explain that I didn't feel like drawing anything.  Hence,
a talking jalapeno.  It's my universe.

So here it is:

Jalapeno Stuffed Peppers

Ingredients

• 1 (8 ounce) package cream cheese, softened
• 1 cup shredded Cheddar cheese
• 1/4 cup mayonnaise
• 1 (1 ounce) package dry ranch salad dressing mix
• 1 1/2 teaspoons garlic powder
• 20 large jalapeno peppers, halved and seeded
• 1 pound sliced bacon, cut in half

Directions

1. Preheat an oven to 400 degrees F (200 degrees C).
2. Stir together the cream cheese, Cheddar cheese, mayonnaise, ranch dressing mix, and garlic powder in a mixing bowl until evenly blended. Spoon some of the cheese mixture into each jalapeno half, wrap with half a bacon strip, and secure with a toothpick. Arrange the wrapped jalapeno halves onto a broiler pan.
3. Bake in the preheated oven until the bacon is no longer pink and beginning to brown, about 20 minutes.

The recipe is from Mrs. Houston on www.allrecipes.com.  Thank you so much for telling me what to do with my peppers.  I was beginning to have delusions of pepper grandeur and visions of pepper inadequacies but I got better.  (Thank you, Monty Python.)

Once I bought Jamaican Hot Peppers to make a salsa and it
was the hottest salsa that I ever did.  It made HIM cry.  So
naturally HIM took a batch of it to work with chips so
HIM could share the love.  It made other men cry, too.
I'm so proud.  I'll never buy those kind of peppers again.
But hey I want to try one of the Ghost Peppers.

For some reason I couldn't pick a peck of pickled peppers.  (Hahaha.  I had to work that in.  It also reminds me that my name isn't Peter.  But there is a Peter Principle.  My husband thought I was making that up when I told him years ago because at the time he worked for a complete dick who was actually named Peter.)  (The Peter Principle states that "in a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence", meaning that employees tend to be promoted until they reach a position at which they cannot work competently.  This is from Peter Principle in Wikipedia.)  (I didn't have to make it up.  And OMG, you know this person don't you?  You worked for him/her/it until you couldn't stand it anymore and found another job.  Am I right?  You bet I'm right.)  (This is kind of how the presidency works except the electoral college does the honors.)  (I told you I was going to wander aimlessly.  Don't say you weren't warned.)

In perpetuity means I can mess with Mellow, my sister's cat,
the weird butted pumpkin I grew, and HIM forever.  I really
like that phrase, 'in perpetuity.'

And here's the reason I was thinking about jalapenos in the first place.  (It turns out that this blog has a point to it, after all.)  Last week, HIM, the man to whom I'm married, was traveling last week and made the mistake of consuming some massively cheese-drenched, jalapeno-topped, towering nachos of doom.  Apparently his stomach didn't think much of it and especially not of the jalapenos in particular.

How did he know that?  Well, I'll leave that to your imagination.

Anyhoo, one of the many airports at DFW was the proud recipient of his stomach's preeminent and grand moment of massive discontent.  Upon returning home, HIM shared with me some inspired tidbits of knowledge gleaned from using airport bathrooms.  (I'm supremely surprised at the thought that this subject was given and I'm compelled to share.)

Let's see.  How to proceed.  Well, the first thing is to mention that most of the toilets at DFW are motion sensitive controlled.  That's the auto-flushers for those of you who aren't following me.  Once you move, the toilet has a little sensor that either detects that you moved and assumes you're done and flushes or it's light sensitive and senses that it's not dark anymore and flushes.  One or the other.  I'm not so interested that I even feel like googling it.  You get the picture.  You don't have to pull the handle because the toilet will do it for you.

Allow me to describe the dilemma here.  It's happened to me.  And it's scared, well, the crap out of Cressy before.  (And if ever you have the crap scared out of you, then this is the correct place to be.)  If you move before you're done, sometimes the sensor will take that as initiative to let it rip.  It will flush before you're done and you're not expecting it so it's somewhat disconcerting.  (Not really a dilemma yet, but I'm getting to that.)

If an individual were to say, fill up the toilet and then move before ready, and the toilet were to back up because it had been filled a little too damned much, then the individual might look down and see that the contents of the bowl was coming at him like a little poopy tidal wave.  (Vivid imagery, huh?)Since the individual has got their pants down around their ankles, they can't just leap up and run away from the impending nastiness.  No, they're trapped in the compartment.  (Try to envision a person doing the droopy drawers shuffle whilst attempting to get away.  That's a wretched mental image, isn't it?)

And it gets worse.  You see, the poor individual is stuck between a whoopsiedoodle waterfall and the door, which opens to the inside.  (The poor bastard would have to move backward with the pants around his ankles in order to get the stall's door open and escape.  Thus, they are truly hosed because there really isn't a way to get out without getting into...something or other.)

Only the coolest jalapenos say, 'Dude.'

Consequently, HIM has mastered the hide-the-sensor method.  Using a bit of toilet paper one covers the sensor and prevents it from auto-flushing until an individual is well and truly prepared to amscray before calamity befalls them.  (I.e., this means that their pants are up, their belts are buckled, their bags are not on the floor and fully exposed, and they have the hand on the stall's door handle all before removing the toilet paper shield to allow the device to function.)  (Did I mention that I was impressed with the amount of thought that went into this particular subject?  Why, yes, yes I did.)

All of this because of jalapenos and possibly the Peter Principle.

I'm referencing a horror movie from the 80s here, as I have
done before.  But I thought it was apt since the
jalapenos certainly tore something of HIM's apart.

Yes, I am slightly demented.  I went from jalapenos in my garden to how to confuse auto-flushers at DFW International Airport in one blog!  WTFWIT?  I do not know.  However, I'll bet you don't ever look at those automatic flushing toilets the same again.