How hot was it?

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In an ideal world, described by a perfect writer, it would bubble every now and then, a massive gaseous eructation from from the bottom, slowly rising to the top to stop and settle. In that perfect setting, stray beams of light would glance off reflecting an evil rainbow. Then the bubble would pop, spraying everywhere and things that rose to the surface in the bubble would slowly sink back to the bottom like a Nile crocodile that had just missed snagging a zebra a the water's edge.

But, it was not an ideal world and, as evidenced by the typos that slip through every week, I am certainly not a perfect writer.

So, it had to sit, dark and hot, in the barn like the Reboobicans in Washington beginning in January 2007. Any stray beams of light that wandered through stopped long enough to ask for directions and hauled out so fast a Georgia Tech theoretical physicist would rewrite Einstein's laws of the universe more along the lines of E=cpBBHpVC, that being the shorthand math equation that Energy equals a crock pot of Ben Baker's Habanero pepper Venison Chili.

I've cooked up some tough food over the years. I've made more than my share of coffee with enough attitude to make Cynthia McKinney back down. A few times I've even pulled something out of the pot that could be called mean. Once in college I even made some spaghetti sauce which caused a frat boy (not me) to cry.

But that crock pot of chili, which I cooked especially for the Christian Union annual Christmas Supper was different.

It was not hot.

It was not vile.

It was not evil.

It was a religious experience. I say that because it was possessed.

If you were one of the few, the proud, the denser than a lead brick, the determined to prove "you can't make chili so hot I can't eat it" crowd, well then you understand what the chili was.

If you ate a bowl of my plasma fusion with kidney beans, on the next day you didn't "heed the call of nature." No. You summoned a priest and had an exorcism. You walked funny for the next two days.

In the tradition of the finest chili, it cooked for two days. In the tradition of things that take place in my barn because doing it in the house would make my family move into the Ramada Inn, it cooked in the barn. Even I couldn't stand the smell of it in the kitchen.

Larry "Hawgin'" Fishbreath, who was born with a titanium stomach, lifted the lid and sniffed. His nose fell off. 

"Best my sinuses have felt since deer season opened," he said. He took the stirring spoon (plastic - you don't eat MY chili with metal table hardware) and dipped off a little bit. He sipped at the spoon, pooching his lips out far enough to park a Cadillac.

His lips smacked. He looked at me.

"Man, that is goo" was as far as he got before The Burn kicked in. I watched his lips chap. His gum line receded faster than my brother's hairline. A filling fell out of a tooth, bounced off the table-saw table and rolled into the sawdust.

"Woooo. That has to be good," I said, taking the spoon from his unresisting hand. I dipped myself some and slurped it off the spoon. Like a fine wine connoisseur would treat a rare vintage, I rolled the chili across my tongue.

When I had my entire mouth coated, The Burn kicked in. My tongue dialed 911 on Hawgin's cell phone. My brain leaked out of my ears. My sinuses opened wide enough to accept a liberal Damnocrat. I'd have spoken in tongues, but my throat went on strike.

It was good chili.

The best part is, after the church supper I had some left over. Lemme know if you 'd like to sample some.