when did you know you where hooked?

pepperdan

pepperdan

i don't mean jalapenos, red pepper, store bought habaneros
 
 
i mean what defining moment did you eat your fist super hot, and know you were hooked and nothing else would do ?
 
 
 
 
 
 
i grew hydroponic ghost and loved them, but the most defining moment was when i got a bag of soil grown red ghost from theghostpperstore and took a small one in a fast food restaurant and put it on a burger, embarrassingly sweated, got the full endorphin rush
 
My moment was about 9 years ago :)
 
I was the Head Chef for a local restaurant here in Tampa (Ybor City). One of my kitchen employees (which i had already known for quite some years from other kitchens i worked in around town coming up) gave me a ziploc bag of fresh ghost peppers. He told me he got them from a fresh vegetable vendor at a local weekend market. He said they would BLOW the doors off anything i had ever tasted before.............well..........Lets just say that I no longer run a kitchen professionally, and i now run a full time grow of NUCLEAR hot peppers professionally. Having a 5+ acre nursery "ready-to-go" to start my plan helped! :) My grandfather started it back in the 50's, and my dad then ran it (Thriving tropical foliage business) from the late 60's up until about 2 years ago....Growing up my house was on the same property as the nursery (right next to my grandparents house on the same property too....Tampa natives thru n thru.. lol)...so "growing" I guess is just in my blood......when i was coming up i got work detail in the nursery when i did something "wrong" lol....NUCLEAR hot peppers changed my life...literally speaking!! Now i do it full time 8 days a week :) I still have the same passion for the food industry...just now i SUPPLY ingredients instead of create plates of art with them :)
 
When I was hovering over the toliet, puking my guts out. Just joking lol. I've had 1 super hot(bhut Jolkia) so far, and it was so hot, I couldn't taste it. Now I'm really intrested what the flavor really is. I'm building myself up to taste it :)
 
Well, I ate a whole habanero(the gateway pepper) in college at a party. Just one. A few other guys were doing it too, and I wanted to fit in. I didn't even like it at first. After the painful burning subsided I felt bad. Then I did it again at another party and felt better. Really good! And that's when I knew. I began to do it on purpose. It started with just every once in a while, then it was every weekend. I was doing it by myself more and more. Habaneros weren't enough anymore, I needed stronger. I did terrible things just to keep my supply coming. Eventually it was every meal, and then between every meal too. Now I have to do it just to feel "right". My friends and family can't eat with me anymore.... I need help. Won't you please help me???
 
A friend grew some ghosts 2 years ago. I`d never met anything hot I couldn`t handle and I`m the kind of ass/idiot that goes into a real Indian Restaurant in London and says "Make it as hot as you possibly can", so they do and then come out of the kitchen to watch. No problem. Mongo say "Hot is good." 6 Habanero poppers? Sure no problem.
 
I ate the first Bhut and thought, wow, that`s quite hot. WAY before the heat hit, I ate another one. Really bad idea. About 30 seconds later I knew I was in trouble. Big trouble. Then the panic started. How could anything be this hot? It`s not possible! Then it started to get worse and I didn`t know quite what to do with myself. Rocking didn`t help, inhaling loudly didn`t help, pounding on my leg didn`t help, head butting the table didn`t help. And then I got it in my eye. Huge Panic. I`m going blind! I need to go to the Emergency Room! I`m going to die! 
 
Luckily for me, my Wife used some of her makeup remover to get rid of most of the oil in my eye and I then started to have a huge endorphin rush. Panic number 3, calling panic number 3. I had no idea what was going on, I just knew it must be bad. Heart attack, maybe? Perhaps I am going to die after all! 
 
Then the high started. And I haven`t come down since!!! 
 
I split a ghost pepper with a friend at a restaurant that was having a hot wings contest the next day and the chef brought one out for us...my friend has always been a chili head while I was typically shy of even a habanero...after the burn that night and the thought of possibly needing to go to a hospital...I'm hooked...I now make a ghost pepper tortilla chip and keep fresh Jolokia in the fridge :)
 
Actually it was the red robin burger where you can add ghost pepper sauce and deep fried red jalapenos for a dollar I thought I would try it so I did then I started redipe hunting then seed hunting and here we are
 
definitely when I ate some Yellow 7 pot. I had grown it myself, I only ate a quarter of a pod and loved the flavour and perfect heat!
 
I've always enjoyed spicy/hot food, but didn't get addicted to peppers til this year. My wife and I had been talking about growing a garden for a while, then eventually we said let's go get some plants. I wanted a few pepper varieties to make some sauces with, while she wanted tomatoes and some flowers. I got 2 habs, 2 jalapeno's, and a cayenne for me and a bell for her. While looking for sauce recipes, I found this site. I only viewed the sauce recipe section at first, then one night (probably while drunk lol) I started browsing other sections. Quickly became very interested in the different varieties of peppers I'd never known about, and after getting my first sfrb of mixed peppers I was hooked. I honestly can't remember who I got my 1st box from on here, but I know the 1st 1 I tried was a fatalii, as I'd read so many times about how great they are. Grabbed 1 out of the box and took a bite, and was blown away. The flavour was so much better than I expected, and the heat really caught my attention. Been addicted ever since.
 
I had two defining moments.  I grew my own peppers for the first time last year and had 2 ghost pepper plants, a chocolate hab and a Bishops Crown.  The first moment I had was when I picked my first chocolate hab off my plant and sliced it up and put it on a burger.  Way better than anything I had ever got from the store.  The second moment was the first pot of chili I made with a few of the ghost peppers, a couple chocolate habs and some of the Bishops Crown (not much heat but great taste).  That was it for me.  I went from a few plants last year to about 15 this year and even more planned for next.
 
Probably for me was when I had the first superhot turn colors. It was a brain strain and I kept the pod and everything dried just because of how it made me feel. It took so long for it to grow make pods and then those pods turn color it just made me feel what I was doing was significant to me, so once I had that pod I could not stop.

I grew peppers before but just for putting in things but once that brain strain grew and matured I loved it. Then once I had eaten them there was no going back. My fiancé says that one day she will catch me petting my pepper plants... I hope that doesn't happen ha.
 
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