In business, we are often told that you need to roll your sleeves up and get ”hands on”.
With the threat of it ending in tears as the sales barely troubled the scorers, it was the raw ingredients themselves that soon had their eyes watering.
Despite the slow start, business had thankfully begun to pick up a little after the first few weeks.
Optimistically, Emma and Hayley had been well prepared and made up 100 of each type.
A month in, they were well ahead of the game but Hot Stuff had been particularly gruelling.
The supplier had issued a warning to wear goggles and a face mask when handling it and the two mums diligently masked and gloved up for the first filling session.
However, nothing had prepared them for the reality of handling chilli with the foreboding monikers of “Butch T”, “Ghost”, “7 Pot” and “Moruga”.
The four 100 gram bags of super-hot chilli powders looked innocent enough in Emma’s spotless kitchen - which was now approved with the local council as a food preparation area!
The least hot one was opened and using tiny funnels and a cocktail stick a piece, they started to fill the miniature bottles.
It all seemed to be going swimmingly…
Then, after five minutes, Hayley started to feel very hot and sweaty. She peered at Emma and to her horror Emma was bright red.
“Are you okay?” Hayley asked. “I was about to ask you the same. I’m a bit hot”, replied Emma.
Then Hayley made the fatal mistake of taking off her goggles and rubbing her eyes. There was a scream and they both ran to the bathroom, eyes and noses streaming.
They then made their second fatal mistake.
Water simply acts as the perfect medium to conduct the chilli to wherever the water flows. This information which is written very boldly on a warning leaflet in the matchboxes was not in their bank of super-hot chilli trivia knowledge at that time and it took a little while for them to recover.
Thankfully, undaunted but more cautious, the next day they started again with full face masks, and white overalls to protect their clothes. They looked like they should be in Orbital!
