I’ve had the displeasure of being burned by touching hot objects and chili peppers and I’ve learned a couple things. These learned lessons worked so well for me that I want to share them with you.

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If you plan to accidentally burn yourself in the near future you might want to Pin this post for future reference. Just sayin’.

First lesson: When touching chili peppers, don’t!

*ahem. Actually I want to tell you what took the burn away.

Yes, silly novice me. Chopping chili peppers. Must have been my first time I suppose.

For one, we aren’t big on eating hot and spicy things here and when I do cook with peppers I usually am getting them out of a can or a jar already chopped. But one day my friend Allie had extra peppers (hot and not) and was giving them away. I took a bag and proceeded to use my bare hands to cut them up and scoop them up to put in baggies for the freezer.

Now, I what I did know was to not touch my eyes with my hands after touching even the outside of chili peppers.

I guess I didn’t know about touching them with my bare hands. Period.

Sometime later I noticed my hands burning.

And they burned…and burned…and BURNED!!

I searched the internet for a cure. I tried milk, dishsoap, probably ice and who knows what else. Maybe I didn’t try some of those things long-enough. But whatever I was trying wasn’t giving me the relief I needed.

And then I decided to try the toothpaste idea  I had read about but hadn’t tried… Colgate toothpaste to be exact. Colgate just happens to be the brand I use.

And it worked!!

I smothered my palms in Colgate, then washed with dishsoap (that may have helped too- but didn’t help by itself). Then I repeated the process one more time.  Hello, relief! Goodbye burn!

Second lesson: Don’t touch that hot pan with your bare skin.

Yes, that would be me. Burned my thumb good using it to push a very hot cooking sheet into the oven. I knew I might be destined for something terrible. Blister, maybe even skin peeling- who knows. But I knew enough to cool the burn.

I ran my thumb under cold water and then got an ice pack from the freezer and applied it with pressure to my thumb for maybe an hour.  Basically till the pain was gone or nearly gone and guess what… NO blister.  I was amazed.

I can’t guarantee you the same results, but now I know what I’ll be doing the next time I’m cutting chili peppers (there might not be a next time though) or forgetfully touch a hot pan 😉