So I know, I come off to people as though I think I'm some sort of Emril or Jamie Oliver. I love cooking, I cook all the time, blah, blah, blah... but let me recount last night's dinner so you can point and laugh. The recipie in question was pretty simple. It's just a sauteed chicken breast with a spice rub, covered with a green olive tapenade. I've made this recipie 4 or 5 times. It's quick. It's easy. It does not generally lead to respiratory failure. Ah, but last night...

I was pre-mixing the spices into a little dish, and I was being very careful, because last time I put on a little too much spice. So I'm actually measuring and I actually cut the recipe properly so that I would only have enough spice rub to cover the two chicken breasts I was making, rather than the 4 the recipe calls for.

Now a bit of background on my spices for some reason the last time I bought the two spices in question, cumin and cayenne pepper, I could only find cumin in a smallish bottle, and the cayenne in a gigantor one. This is kind of goofy, since I have enough pepper now to last me for years (even the most spicy food I make never calls for more than half a teaspoon), and the cumin is often used in recipes to the tune of 2 tablespoons. So you can probably see where this is going. Apparently I put in 3/4 of a tablespoon of cayenne pepper and 1/2 a teaspoon of cumin, because I just assumed the bigger bottle was the cumin (have I mentioned that I'd already fed Stella, given her a bath and put her to bed... I was tired).

I didn't notice that anything was off until I started choking while trying to flip the chicken. It was like fire. I was coughing and could barely breath. The spice was being lifted into the air by the heat. I thought maybe this was because I'd used less olive oil than usual. Wrong.  Somehow I got the food plated and Julie and I sat down to eat. She took one bite and immediately started gulping milk and eating bread. I took one bite and knew it was time for fast food. Julie was very hungry, and ended up taking another bite. The fire was horrible. It was like there was a sludge of pain going down the back of your throat. And the worst part was that it didn't even taste good, so there was no reason to go on eating.

Man, what a horrible, simple mistake...