Though Halloween has come and gone for most of us, those of us who lost a week on a root canal remodel gone bad have some catching up to do. In the hours before my tooth became infected, I had the best Halloween I have ever had.
We started the day with great anticipation -- friends were coming to visit to explore "the lost road" with us. (You must read about it here because we are having huge amounts of fun with our discovery.) We enjoyed a breakfast of sourdough pancakes cooked and what might be best described as eggs poached in bacon grease, all cooked on our new/old 1940s Wedgewood. I can't vouch for the eggs though I heard they were out-of-this-world. I love eggs and I love bacon, but daaamn. We hit the lost road with bellies full of bacon grease and explored the lost road, likely the first humans to do so in 70 years or so. I expect the highlight for most of us were the lost road portraits -- "scary lone hiker portraits." All friends now receive a personal photo shoot on our discovery.
By evening, we dressed children in costumes and headed to a trick-or-treating hay ride, the sort that can only happen in a tiny little mountain village.
Alastair appeared as a depression-fighting chili pepper for the thirty minutes he was able to stay awake. I should also mention that there were no walnuts involved this year, but I did manage to score a large bag of sunflower seeds as my sole trick-or-treating treat. The night ended at a camp fire with hot dogs.
Chili pepper??
If this blog has a focus at all (and between the homesteading blog issues, bees stuck in my wall, and obsessions over dairy foods it very likely doesn't), I would have to say the focus is on foods and nutrients that fight depression. In the book Rebuild from Depression: A Nutrient Guide, I review the nutrients most likely to cause depression if we are deficient. From that nutrient guide, I develop a list of foods highest in those nutrients using the USDA nutrient database of over 5,000 foods. In the book I call the foods "depression buster foods." Red chili peppers make the list. (Read more about the Rebuild philosophy on foods that fight depression.)
Hot peppers are one of the most memorable foods on the list to me because I strongly considered removing them. With each food I looked at how much of the item you would have to eat to get a reasonable level of depression-fighting nutrients and found that you would need to eat seven hot peppers. Seven. Does that seem reasonable? A couple of years ago I described on this blog why I kept peppers on the list and yet removed spirulina:
Frankly, eating peppers like that seems a bit crazy but the men in my family seem to “get it.” My Uncle Fred and cousin Andy, for instance, have been known to grow their own peppers in a window box to ensure a source of good, hot peppers. Andy is way over the top with his pepper-eating. He’s one of those guys who eats them whole like they are any other sort of snack. When we have had a really hot, inedible batch, someone always says “Mail those to Andy.”
The topic came up again as I was working on the book. When I made the list of depression buster foods, I did a little reality check on each of the foods. Spirulina, for instance, made the list. But the measure was 100 grams – a mountain of green powder. The amount of spirulina that would have made the list was really unreasonable for anyone to eat, even though it has some really good health properties.
Red chili peppers are actually on the list as well. I considered cutting the peppers from the list. Who would eat seven peppers after all? “Andy would,” I said to myself.
I asked him about eating seven peppers and he said “No problem. Just make sure they are not habaneros.”
Andy recounted a story of eating about seven habaneros one night alone and feeling like he was going to have a heart attack. That is one of those experiments you do not try twice, apparently.
His wife Stephanie then recounted a cruise trip in which Andy ate a mountain of peppers as an appetizer before the formal cruise dinner. After drinking only one beer with dinner, Andy wasn't himself.
“There I was in ‘my prom dress,’” said Stephanie, “and he was as drunk as a college student. I couldn’t believe it.”
“It was something about those peppers,” added Andy.
So it’s no problem eating a mountain of peppers reports Andy, just watch the habaneros and pass on the beer.
There you are folks, go crazy but not too crazy. Habaneros are probably best saved for a little extra heat in some salsa. They also make an excellent Halloween costume.
