CSA Killed My Contact Lenses--and I Liked It

The box from the Sunnyside CSA this week contained the usual goodies from the Golden Earthworm farm, including three lovely green peppers and two wondrously fragrant onions.

I decided to make steak sandwiches for me & Wesley. I carmelized the onions and sauteed the peppers, browned some flank steak in the cast iron then cut it across the grain and served it on a toasted baguette with some olive oil and goat cheese. With potato chip and a nice salad made from the CSA red leaf lettuce & tomato (and Foodtown cucumber), it was a delicious meal. I'm getting hungry just remembering it (though being almost 7 months pregnant it doesn't take much).

As we sat down to eat, I noticed that the skin between my fingers was burning, but I didn't remember touching any of the pans I used. As we were eating our sandwiches, we discovered that one of the three green peppers was a hot one. I am very sensitive to capsaicin (what makes the hot pepper hot) but I wasn't having much trouble with this one, possibly because it was cooked down & I had removed all the seeds. The fire was a quick flash that faded just as quickly.

However, as the night progressed, the burning on my hands spread and I realized that I was going to be in trouble.

See, I wear contact lenses. I learned once the hard way what careless jalapeno handling will mean for my ability to remove my contacts at night. So I'm always careful when handling hot peppers not to touch any part of them but the skin. This sneaky pepper, however, I'd been handling without care--that is, pulling out the ribs, brushing off the seeds, and cutting it up with my usual culinary abandon. I basicaly wiped it all over my hands.

That night, I braced myself for contact lens removal. There is nothing like having that on fire feeling directly on your eyeball. The last (only) time this happened I ended up discarding the lenses but I'd just switched to this pair on Friday and I hate to see a good pair go. Plus I had only just gotten used to my schedule--I am very flaky and can never remember when it's time to switch to a new pair. So I put them in the case.

In the morning, I pulled out contact lens number one and rinsed it beyond thoroughly, then stuck it in my eye. My poor assaulted eye immediately flooded with tears and began to swell up. I ripped out the lens and through both of them out. There was enough capsaicin left on my hands that even putting in the new pair caused some pretty intense burning, and for most of the morning I looked like I'd been crying.

My hands were burning for most of the day, even though I kept washing them and washing them and washing them. I finally put some burn ointment on and that helped. A friend suggested I dip them in milk, but that didn't really help.

Last night, over 24 hours since I'd handled that pepper, I took my contacts out and experienced a brief flash of burning.

Fortunately, this morning, when I put my contacts in, there was no burning at all, and my hands are back to normal.

But man, I tell you, that sandwich was awesome.