El Viaje Misterioso de Nuestro Katalina

When Homer Simpson ate the "Merciless Peppers of Quetzaltenango - grown deep in the jungle primeval by the inmates of a Guatemalan insane asylum," he went on a weird and wonderful journey through the desert and his brain.

When I ate the picante sauce that I made this year, I felt like Homer in that episode.

Each year, I cook up a batch of picante sauce for my personal stash and to enter in the State Fair of Texas. (Did I tell you that I won the blue ribbon in 1996? I'll never get tired of that story.) Anyway, I can never get it hot enough. Every year I add more peppers, and every year the salsa is warm but not hot.

This year, I added fresh cayennes to the mix. And I juiced the tomatoes so that I didn't need to cook the salsa as long as usual. (Cooking makes the peppers lose their heat, so a short cooking time is a good thing.)

When I tasted the salsa during the cooking process, I burned the taste buds off my tongue and was unable to taste anything for about 24 hours. But canning mellows the salsa, so I still didn't have much hope.

Until today.

After opening a jar today, I realized that I have reached the Homer in the desert level. The salsa literally made the side of my head tingle and stay warm for hours. Hours!

I didn't see Johnny Cash (like Homer did), but I was in a trance-like state for the rest of the day.

Viva el chile!

P.S. To learn more about Homer's voyage, click here.