This morning I made a nice pot of hearty chili for a potluck we're attending this weekend, put it on the stove on "low," and returned to my editing work at the computer.
Moments later, an angry, hot, red patch developed on the back of one hand and my palms and fingers started tingling.
Who knew! That age-old advice about wearing gloves while dicing hot peppers has a sound basis in fact: the same jalapenos that give your food a nice kick can also irritate your skin. ("It stands to reason," as my old friend George Turner would have declared.)
I looked online and found that it's a common problem. One blogger listed a litany of household products that failed to relieve the burning before she got around to stating to the one that actually worked: a two-year-old bottle of mustard! I mixed some ground mustard with water to make a paste and applied it -- a mustard plaster! -- and it cut the worst of the irritation right away.
Or, of course, the capsaicin may have just timed out.
Update: My palms felt sunburned and sensitive to warm water the rest of the day.
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