A sad little tale

[catgate]

Mustafa had harvested his crop of figs and had taken it to market on his donkey.

The figs sold well, and this made Mustafa very happy.

As he looked round the market, before returning home, he happened upon some delicious looking fruit. Beautiful deep red in colour, with a lovely sheen to them.

He had no idea what they were, but they looked so good he just had to take some. In fact they looked so good that he spent nearly all his fig takings on them.

He placed them carefully in a sack on the donkey's back and set off home. As you would expect his expectation got the better of him, and so, half way home, he decided to sample his purchase.

He sat down at the road side and, taking some of the largest of his fruits he bit into one. Just for a second he did not know what to make of his purchase. Then suddenly his eyes began to water and his mouth felt as though it was on fire.

"Well this must be a good feeling", he thought, "No one would spend all this money for a bad experience."

So he chewed his way through another one, with exactly the same result. After eating about half a dozen of them along came a traveller and asked him if he was ill.

" You seem to be suffering a fever," said the traveller, "Can I help you in any way?"

Then he saw what Mustafa was eating, and told him that he was eating a fruit that was know far and wide as a Scotch Bonnet. He also suggested to Mustapha that he should not eat any more.

Mustapha replied that since he had paid so much money for them he was going to eat them, and he would just have to get to like them.

So the traveller bade him farewell, and left him sitting there munching his way through a sack full of chillie peppers with his eyes pouring with tears, a mouth truly on fire and a mind full of strange reasoning.

[dadyassa]

What a sad little story :cray:

The culprit, of course, is a chemical: capsaicin. An extremely powerful and stable alkaloid produced in a crystalline form by glands at the junction of the pepper's placenta and pod walls, capsaicin is found in nothing in nature other than a short list of peppers--or more precisely chilis.

And given that capsaicin breaks down in fats, tell Mustafa that ice cream is really the best antidote for chili pain.

[andsome]

Just a hint of chillies is quite enough thanks.

[catgate]

..glands at the junction of the pepper's placenta and pod walls,

That's odd. I always thought a placenta was some sort of official in the Church of Scotland.

[Thos]

And given that capsaicin breaks down in fats, tell Mustafa that ice cream is really the best antidote for chili pain.

Even if you get it on your testicles??

Moral. Always wash thoroughly after eating hot peppers.

Thos.