Of course you do.

It so happens that if you cut up between sixty and a hundred habanero peppers…

(Which you do. You’ve got a red savina habanero you grew in the garden this year, and you’ve also got a fatali pepper [fataali, fatalii], also basically a habanero in taste and power, that you’ve been wintering over in the front window for two years going on three and that looks like an oversize bonsai. Both have had bumper crops this year. You haven’t even harvested a full quarter of the fruits on the fatali, that still have a tinge of not-fully-orange.)

… in order to dry them in the oven for a day before pulverizing them to powder in a food processor…

(Which you do. That powder is your secret weapon for stews and random dishes – it adds a perfect, all-encompassing warm background glow, provided that you are careful to apply only a few specks of the stuff, tilting your little jar in slow terrified increments as if you were working with plutonium. When drying the peppers, you do not turn the oven up much above 170 F, lest you encounter the vaporization temperature of capsaicin, which you will know you have found when the air in the kitchen suddenly cannot be inhaled.)

… and then later that day you cut up a lot of mushrooms to saute in butter as a side dish for the evening meal…

(Which you do. Amazing how so many dishes magically become a full star better when accompanied by, or directly garnished with, mushrooms sauteed in butter.)

… and cut them up on the same cutting board and use the same knife, those mushrooms will have a lovely warmth that is perfectly distributed.

The same could no doubt be effected under non-harvest circumstances by cutting a single store-bought habanero in half and rubbing the wet surface all over the cutting board and all over the knife.

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maybe you could get the same effect. maybe. i do suspect a store bought habanero would be lacking in the magical effect that occurs when you grow your own peppers. 🙂

You could–but then we would miss the story.

That test for whether your oven is too hot for your chilli sounds a bit drastic. *smile* Lovely to see you writing here again, also lovely to get your thoughtful note. RYN: I hadn’t thought of that “marriage of shyness and habit” but yes, it’s in me, too. I grinned at your “I can’t have won the lottery – it will blow my whole schedule to smithereens!!!” That is too close to the truth forme, sometimes. This time however, though that was probably one of the factors in my refusal, there were others that were more valid – I think. I’ll think about them again in a year or so and see if I still agree with myself!

Sounds delicious.