lproven | I'm meeeeellllltttttiiiiiinnnngggggg... (Reply)

There is a mysterious chilli pepper shortage affecting Brno.

I don't know why, but for the last few months, I've not been able to buy fresh chillies anywhere. Tesco, Albert, Billa, Globus, Lidl, even My Food -- nowhere has anything but sweet peppers.

I've been forced to use dried ones, and a mixture of whatever hot chilli sauces I can get, which did result in a chile sin carne which nearly melted my poor long-suffering flatmate.

So last week I visited a splendid little shop called World of Chilli on Baker Street. (It's not actually called that, of course, but my Mac won't let me enter the correct diacritics and apparently I can't say it right anyway.) I've bought a few packets of dried chillies, and this morning, my scrambled eggs contained tex-mex seasoning, fried onions, and two halves of a dried Fatalii chilli.

This may have been a slight management error. My fingertips are tingling from when I shredded it, I absent-mindedly rubbed my nose which I think is now melting off me like a Dalí clock, and I am sweating and my eyes are watering. Mind you, virtually no trace of my slight hangover has survived this. I don't think there's enough blood left in my endorphin-stream.

This thing was a mere quarter of a million Scovilles. I have just planted half a dozen seeds of Trinidad Moruga Scorpion -- a bracing two million SHU. I am now slightly afraid of the results if these things grow and fruit...