Chapter 58 Pepper testing
I led Olivia into the hot greenhouse as the first stage of the plan had gone through, and the peppers were ready to be picked. As her favorite food was anything spicy, she was my taste tester for the new peppers. It was an expensive and tedious process, but now I hope to make some real money and gain a good amount of class experience for the experiment.
She looked around the greenhouse as she closed her eyes and absorbed the heat. While she looked comfortable, I was already sweating. If we stayed for more than ten minutes, my shirt would be completely soaked through. She breathed out a contented sigh as she explained. “I’m actually a Northerner. I love heat, but I’m also an albino. My parents had to move us south because the sun could have killed me if I stayed in the north… That doesn’t mean I don’t miss the heat.”
I just absorbed her story before things clicked in my mind. That’s why she liked spicy foods, because they played a huge part in a Northerner's diet. She looked at one of the special pepper plants as she kept explaining. “My parents moved south, but that didn’t mean they liked it. The moment I came of age, they went straight back to the north… I know how they feel… I just miss that familial connection.”
I pulled her out of her melancholic downward spiral as I pulled out the pre-prepared peppers. “Well, how about we see how close I got to the taste?” The prepared peppers sat on a plate as I handed them over to her. I tried a tiny slice of the hottest pepper, and I would never make that mistake again.
The normal hottest western pepper was bigger than most of the others, shiny and smooth outside, with a red or yellow skin. The hottest northern pepper was bumpy and orange. It was also the tiniest by a significant margin. The few hybrid peppers were a mixture of both; some were bigger, others were smaller, some were bumpy, others were smooth, and each was a different, varying shade between red, orange, and yellow.
I pointed out the western pepper first. “Let’s get a base heat level first. This is the hottest pepper in the spice bundles currently.” She quickly gobbled up the entire thing. Even this pepper was a struggle for me to eat, and she didn’t even show any signs of how hot it was. She had grown more than accustomed to this spice level since I started growing them.
“Delicious, but not as spicy as I’d like.” I pointed out the hybrids next. “These should be different levels of spice. After tasting them, can you sort them from least to most spicy, please?” She tasted the bumpy yellow one first, her eyes lighting up from the taste. “About four times spicier than the western pepper. It has a more radiating heat that coats your whole mouth instead of just burning where it touches. Very delicious, I really like that one.”
She took a sip of water to clear her palate before moving on to the next pepper. A bigger, skinnier pepper with orange skin. “This is… Just slightly hotter than the western pepper. Maybe twice as spicy? It’s hard to tell. It also has a more bitter taste to it.” She put it next to the starter pepper before I grabbed it and threw it off the plate. These peppers were a higher rarity than what other farmers could produce. If I sold these seeds to other farmers, they’d make almost inedible peppers with them if they’re not delicious when I grow them.
She stared at me before grabbing the ugliest pepper. It was dark red, almost to the point of black, spiky at the top before the bottom started to curl in on itself. She only ate half of the pepper, and that was probably the best decision she made as she cursed. “Holy fuck that’s spicy. Oh my god, I love it!” Tears formed in her eyes as she breathed in from the corners of her mouth, trying to cool it off. “Do you have more water?” She drank down the entire glass of water as I grabbed her an entire pitcher.
She wiped her nose as she explained further. “It has an almost chocolaty aftertaste to it, absolutely delicious if you can handle the heat… I’d put it at seven and a half, maybe eight times spicier than the western pepper.” I really hoped that pepper could grow in this climate; if it couldn’t survive unless it was in this heat, it would have defeated the entire reason for growing them. I still had a few more to check, though.
She had finally begun to sweat, and it was because of the heat of the pepper, not the room. Her clothes clung to her body as she fanned herself, and I couldn’t help but feel myself get aroused at the sight, but quickly averted those feelings before she noticed. Now wasn’t the time to make her feel uncomfortable with my erection.
The next few were also duds; one was only fifty percent spicier than the normal pepper, but it was much smaller, making it impractical to grow it. The next was spicy but had an awful taste. The next was once again, not spicy enough, and although it was bigger than the western pepper, it was sterile and didn’t have any seeds.
The final one she ate before she got to the hottest northern pepper was the last good one. “Oh, this is nice. It is only about twice as spicy as the western one, but while it’s warming my mouth, I feel the rest of my body cool down slightly. This might be a magified pepper.” My eyes shot open in shocked surprise at the news.
The strawberries also had a cooling function, but they grew better in colder temperatures. This could most likely be grown in the north and help non-northerners handle the hotter environment. “How long do you think the cooling effect lasts?” I ate a piece, and while it was spicy like she said, I felt the rest of my body cool down, and I stopped sweating like a faucet.
The strawberry provided a different sense of coolness compared to the pepper. The strawberry was more physically cool; it was similar to flavored ice cubes, while the pepper felt like a normal pepper, but would cool you down once you ate it. Both would have different functions, and I could see the strawberries used to keep other products cool when they were being transported.
I would have Maxwell check the effect later, and hopefully, I could get another thing to grow on this farm, but I wouldn’t be upset if it had to stay in this hotter environment, because it would allow northerners to grow it. We got to the last pepper, the northern pepper, and the hottest of all of them. She picked it up before looking at it. “I don’t recognize this look, I might have been too young to remember eating these.”
She bit the entire thing in half. I heard the pepper crunch with every one of her bites as she thoroughly chewed and swallowed. I tried to read her expression, but she gave nothing away. Finally, she began to cry, and it worried me as I went to hand her the water. She shook her head.
“No, it’s not too hot. It’s… I… The memories of eating this when I was a child. I had forgotten about it entirely until I tried it again and didn’t realize how much I missed it. My family moved all the way as far south as they could so I wouldn’t burn in the sun, and I love them for it… I just didn’t know how much my taste was determined by my childhood.”
I couldn’t help but smile as she kept crying. She finished the last of the pepper, drank down the water, and then gave me a look I wasn’t expecting from her. It was a look my other wives would often give me, and I didn’t have long enough to process it before she was slamming her lips into mine.