Hot Peppers, A Haiku

Love is a pepper.
The heat lingers on the lips
Long after the kiss.

I heard this poem while listening to the Vicars of Vegetables over the internet. The Vicars are two horticulture professors from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, who make a guest appearance on the local public radio station. One of the professors is an expert in Meso-American vegetables, particularly the tomato and the pepper. From him, I learned that Mexican cuisine is more pepper-based than tomato-based. His receipt for salsa includes roasted pablano peppers, tomatillas, olive oil, garlic, onion, and that's about it. From time to time, the two ask listeners to send in their vegetable hiakus, and I scrawled down the little poem above on a Post It note when I heard it over the air back in the fall.

The note has floated around in my bookbag for a couple of months, and I just ran acrossed it today. It reminds me that I want to start the first veggie seeds for my garden this week. Maybe in a few months I'll be able to make my own bowl of fresh salsa. Fresh salsa from the garden, my mouth is already watering...
- posted by Laurie @ 7:06 PM