Sports bars, bowling alleys and the frozen food section at your local grocery store are ruling our lives more than you already know. How so?
Because the increased demand for the cheddar- or cream cheese-stuffed jalapeños that these joints offer has led to scientists creating a brand new variety of jalapeño -- one that's larger and milder.
In other words, a jalapeño that holds even more cheese and won't hurt the little wussy mouths of Yankees who just want something to wash down with a beer.
Great.
The NuMex Jalmundo, as it's been named, represents science's logical end, of course. Not curing cancer or reconciling string theory with loop quantum gravity. Science's true purpose is making even bigger jalapeños so we can make even bigger junk food nuggets and grow even bigger as a nation while we scarf them down.
How was this heroic feat accomplished? By cross-breeding a jalapeño variety with a bell pepper variety. It's so simple, in fact, that you may wonder why no one has ever done this before. Perhaps they have -- but never in such blind pursuit of profit. One can only imagine that the members of the purchasing department at Sonic are spinning happily in their office chairs right now, thinking of how much more majestic those Ched 'R' Peppers will be -- and how much more they'll be able to charge for them.
Granted, we are not against cross-breeding or hybridization here at Eating Our Words. How else would we enjoy Meyer lemons, tangelos or clementines? What we are against is hybridization that erodes the inherent qualities of a fruit or vegetable and turns it into an empty, hollow shell of itself (quite literally in this case). What is a jalapeño without the heat?
That's what we're about to find out with the new NuMex Jalmundo.