Chile Time

Here in our store, it is fairly common for people to come in and comment on how good the place smells, right before they start sneezing.  We have a lot of chile floating in the air from the Tia Rita products that use powder that can lift up into the air.  Over the years the smell of the chile has permeated the walls giving the whole place a pleasant odor.  However, when we are actually mixing and bagging the dry stuff can irritate the nose.  The surprise however, is that the hotter the pepper is doesn't always correspond with how many people sneeze.  The red chile is usually hotter than the green chile we use, but the green leads to far more gesundheits.  Habanero, the hottest pepper that we work with, has nothing on jalapeno powder as far as sneezing and coughing go.  This has lead us to theorize that the nose knows what color it is currently sniffing and dislikes green for whatever reason.