Last night, I cut up ghost peppers to dry for the trash pandas  (or, more to the point, to deter trash pandas). When I did the Moruga Scorpion peppers, I wore gloves. I didn’t bother this time, thinking, “Meh. No broken skin on my hands…how bad could it be?” The correct answer to that is, “You won’t be able to touch anything even marginally warm for hours, you’ll have to wash your hair with one hand because warm water feels like molten lava, and you’ll have to keep your hand outside the blankets when you go to bed because that’s the only way to keep the burning sensation to a level that will allow for sleep.”

It’s better this morning, but I’m NEVER cutting up extremely hot peppers with my bare hands again. Two fingers on my right hand (knife hand) and nearly the entire top side of my left hand (pepper holding hand) felt like they were on fire last night, in spite of my washing my hands three times with dish detergent. Jesus, I can’t imagine what these things must taste like! Anyway, once they’re completely dry (didn’t want to scorch them in the oven), I’ll grind them and seal them. No wonder the trash pandas haven’t been eating the suet cake with scorpion pepper in it, and the ghosts are just as bad. Never touching these bitches bare-handed again!