Beer and Spicy Peppers... Not Always a Great Combo

I think one of the reasons I like cooking so much is that I get to drink while I'm cooking, and it's completely ok because it's part of the whole act. So what if it is a beer at 9 in the morning while I'm frying some bacon. If you look down on me for that, I'll splash a little beer in the pan and boom: I can shove your judgments back into your face with a nice handful of my now famous beer bacon. Anywho, getting back to my original point, one of the small pleasures of cooking is taking a long time to prepare my food so that I can slowly sip on a tasty beverage and enjoy the process. That brings us to tonight.

I was making something very simple with some leftover ingredients - fried rice with eggs, scallions, shrimp, jalapenos, leftover ground lamb meat (which ended up being a genius idea accidentally), soy sauce, and some spices and whatnot. While I was preparing this little Lisa Ling meets George Stephanopoulos meal (please tell me you get that... just think a little bit if you don't... it's not a good joke but my fingers already typed it), I was drinking some ice cold 1664 beer. 1664 is a French beer, and it's not great, but when it's ice cold with the smell of soy sauce and jalapenos in the air, it tastes pretty damn good. So, I finished a few of those 1664s, munched on a little of my fried rice dish for dinner, and then found myself in a very common situation after having had a few beers: I had to pee.

So, because I pee all the time, I walked to the bathroom and relieved myself with great satisfaction... that satisfaction lasted all of about 45 seconds. As some of you have probably already guessed, what happened next was horrible. As I was zipping up and walking away from the bathroom, I started feeling a light stinging sensation. Now, if any other guys are like me, any sort of oddity other than the norm when it comes to your junk is extremely alarming and unwelcome. I tried to mentally discredit the stinging by convincing myself I must have nicked some skin with the zipper on the way up. But then, as paranoia set in, I realized what I'd done. In all my cooking and beer drinking glory, I had forgotten to wash my hands before I ate dinner... the same hands that had been handling the jalapeno. Just so you know, I'm a righty, so when I chop things for cooking, I hold the food in my left hand and chop with my right hand. Similarly, I'm a righty when it comes to peeing as well. But for some reason, tonight, I felt the need to be ambidextrous at the toilet. Well, that jalapeno I had cut just a short while before really taught me not to be so cocky when it comes to my urination technique. What followed for the next 30 minutes or so was just sheer hell. I've never been victim to an STD, and I'm glad because stinging on your junk aint no joke. About 15 minutes in, I even resorted to pouring milk on myself to stop the horror. Let me tell you, when you step back 2 minutes after pouring milk on your man parts, it makes the situation a little bit better for the second that you are laughing at yourself for doing such a thing. And it didn't work by the way... thanks milk for trying, but you don't always "do a body good."

Now, as I write this blog post, the stinging has subsided. I have leftover fried rice in the fridge and the experience almost made me want to just throw it all away if it weren't so damn delicious. And there's a little window into my brain; Even after this horrible stinging shenanigans of a situation, my heart still lies with the fried rice. I'll be eating it with a very long fork though.