Peppers are the Scorpios of the Vegetable Kingdom

My husband and I have been recently delighted by fresh jalapeño slices on our dinners. Taking the seeds out and using just the green makes them not too spicy for me, but also so fresh - what is the flavor of the pepper behind the spice, or entwined with the spice? It’s so hard to name but it feels like life. Like a little blast-beam of life. Try it if you haven’t, or if you used to and forgot, like me, which is most of my cooking life — recycling through things I used to like and forgot and then remember.

I’ve been cooking for so many years now and I still don’t understand the difference between peppers as named in recipes. Cookbook writers say “chiles” and I have no idea if they mean jalapeños, or green chilis, or the variety of other kinds of peppers, which I still don’t know all the names of or the differences. I know habaneros are orange (sometimes?), I probably know some other names of them if I saw them but I always forget and I never remember which ones are really spicy or not - and! It seems they are differently spicy and don’t want to be fully named or understood - such a Scorpio quality right?!

Elusive, mysterious, providing a lot of depth, in and out of extremes, brings the magic, that soulful quality that it’s hard to describe, peppers are definitely Scorpios.