I do a little gardening. I have been specific with what I grow. My garden is limited to hot peppers from cayenne to habanero to ghost peppers.
The pride of my garden are the Carolina Reaper plants that I have grown in the past.
Carolina Reapers are the hottest pepper in the World and nothing to casually mess around with. At a 1.5 million Scoville rating these peppers are not the kind one wants to just take a bite of.
I made the mistake one time of eating a whole pepper once that had been dried. I found some thick pretzel sticks and a tub of cream cheese at work. I thought by putting a generous amount of cream cheese on the pretzel and rolling it in the crumbled dried pepper it would coat the pepper enough to make the burn less intense.
The technique worked well on my tongue and while hot the cream cheese made it tolerable. With copious amounts of cream cheese, I was over time able to consume the whole pepper. What I didn't plan on was the sucker punch my stomach gave me after about 45 minutes.
I felt a searing heat in my belly that felt as if I had been punched by a prizefighter. As my shift at work came to an end I raced to the nearest McDonalds and purchased some milk to drink which calmed down my rebelling stomach.
The peppers are bred in South Carolina by "Smokin" Ed Currie of PuckerButt Pepper Company in Fort Mill, SC.
In the past, I have grown the traditional strain of Carolina Reapers but this year decided to grow a chocolate Reaper and peach flavored reapers. I ordered 4 live plants from Pepper Joes https://pepperjoe.com/.
The baby seedlings arrived when I was out of town and one of the little guys did not make it. The other 3 were weak but I got some water and sun to them and they are looking much better. I have been impressed with Pepper Joes in the past and this year was no exception. Pepper Joes promised to send me another order of seedlings even though I was at fault for the poor health of the plants.
Carolina Reaper Pepper in all its glory