Cast iron

I went to the grocery a couple of days ago to stock up on the usual stuff we need, which always includes a large jar of jalapeño peppers. We eat jalapeño peppers on almost everything, which I choose to believe is not a quiet commentary on the quality of my cooking. Or maybe I should choose not to believe it, which would give me the excuse to serve heat-n-eat specialties like Spaghetti-O's and Swanson's Chicken & Dumplings every night.

We had tacos on Tuesday evening for dinner - really good ones with seasoned ground beef (spiced up with half a cup of jalapeño pepper juice, natch), lots of shredded cheese and lettuce -- served with tortilla chips and nacho cheese. Everyone who has ever eaten at a swim club or volleyball team's snack bar knows that you have to have jalapeño peppers for the nachos, and they're not too bad on the tacos, either. I didn't have any, however, because one of the woes of middle age is the tendency to get heartburn from eating extremely spicy food in the evening.

For lunch yesterday, then, the girls had some oven-baked pizza snacks and they had jalapeño peppers with those, although I abstained, feeling that the piquant taste of pepperoni and sausage is overwhelmed by the heat index of the peppers.

Last night, we had a pot of delicious Mexican chili for dinner. Mexican chili is served with corn chips instead of the typical saltine crackers of traditional chili and also boasts diced green onions and some shredded cheese on top - very tasty, especially when jalapeño peppers are added on top as a tasty little garnish.

I opened the fridge to get out the onions, the cheese and the jar of peppers, only to find that the peppers weren't there. Upon interrogation, the girls admitted that between the two of them, they had consumed an entire jar of jalapeño peppers between Tuesday's dinner and Wednesday's lunch. Wednesday's dinner would have to carry on, pepper free.

I was annoyed by this and told them that they need to cut back on their consumption of jalapeño peppers, leaving some for someone else in the world -- namely, me, who was willing to risk the heartburn -- to eat. Meelyn and Aisling were indignant and insisted that we need to increase our grocery budget to allow for the purchase of more peppers, two jars per week instead of just one.

Is my cooking really that bad?