Fried eggs, uncured ham, trail-mix oatmeal

This is a new batch of prepared oatmeal that contains several ounces of some kind of tropical trail mix scooped from the bulk bins at Whole Foods®. The trail mix contains sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, almonds, Brazil nuts, raisins, dried papaya, mango, and has an overall slightly green coloration. I got it because it was different. The oatmeal is about ten or twelve cups, the trail mix is about a cup and a half, and the pile was augmented with more raisins, pecans, dried cherries, dried cranberries, brown sugar, salt, and a ton of cinnamon, and by ton I mean a few full rounded tablespoons.

Uncured ham. Try this some time, you'll fall in love with it.

Eggs fried in sweet butter, that means unsalted, with a few dots of Chulula® sauce.

Dairies salt butter to prolong its shelf-life. Salt masks a multitude of sins. It's a way of cheating really, otherwise, they'd have to be a lot more careful about handling, processing, transportation, storage, etc. Unsalted butter keeps everybody honest down the line. There's just no way of disguising rancidity.

Chulula is made with arbol and piquin chile peppers. Arbol means "tree," and pequin connotes "tiny," (pea-ken, as in pequeño). These tiny piquins are the most fiercely hot of the annum type of Capsicum cultivars. I have two stock funny personal stories regarding piquin pepper plants that involve their fiery hotness and human scrotums but I must leave them for another day. Annums are the most frequently encountered types of chiles. They're distinguished from the Chinense which includes the extremely hot habaneros, called Chinese because of their resemblance to Chinese paper lanterns, but this is a misnomer because all chiles, ALL chiles originate in the American continents, that is notwithstanding all the exotic African types, Thai, Japanese and Indian, Portuguese, Italian, Spanish and Austrian paprika. Got that? American. So, if the Indian Tezpur or the Zimbabwe Birds Eye is billed as the hottest chile pepper in the world, be assured it's actually nothing more than the Central American piquin that found its way to India and to Africa via Portuguese explorers, because I said so.

Birds are immune to the affects of capsaisum, an alkaloid evolved by plants to deter mammals but not to deter birds. These tiny birds' eye chiles are easily dislodged from the plant by birds, ravenously consumed, and their seeds broadcast within convenient packages of organic fertilizer. Along with the extremely popular annum and the very popular, generally much hotter Chinense chile types, there are also the less frequently encountered Frutescens, Pubescens, and Baccatum types.

Arbole chiles are just beyond midway on the Scoville scale of hotness, they'd be a 6 out of 10. But that scale is bollox. Piquins would be a 7 out of 10 on that scale, but really, they're much hotter than that, hotter than Thais and they rival the heat of habaneros and the Indian Tezpur. I know, I've grown them. So there.

My dad used to put catsup on fried eggs and that totally grossed me out.