The State Journal-Register out of Springfield, IL really has it going on lately with some great articles of interest to chileheads. This first article is a great story on the ongoing phenomenon of the Bhut Jolokia out of India. Here is an excerpt:

‘When you eat it, it’s like dying’

By TIM SULLIVAN
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published Wednesday, September 19, 2007

HANGPOOL, India — The farmer, a quiet man with an easy smile, has spent a lifetime eating a chile pepper with a strange name and a vicious bite.

His mother stirred them into sauces. His wife puts them out for dinner raw, blood-red morsels of pain to be nibbled — carefully, very carefully — with whatever she’s serving.
Around here, in the hills of northeastern India, it’s called the “bhut jolokia” — the “ghost chile.” Anyone who has tried it, they say, could end up an apparition.

“It is so hot you can’t even imagine,” said the farmer, Digonta Saikia, working in his fields in the midday sun, his face nearly invisible behind an enormous straw hat. “When you eat it, it’s like dying.”

Outsiders, he insisted, shouldn’t even try it. “If you eat one,” he told a visitor, “you will not be able to leave this place.”

Read the rest of the source article from the State Journal-Register

This next story is about a aspiring chilehead on his ascendancy to chile pepper nirvana. Here’s the excerpt:

Peoria pepper fan has yet to meet a chile he can’t conquer

By JEREMY PELZER
STAFF WRITER
Published Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Craig Mitckes is a chile pepper enthusiast on a mission: finding a pepper too hot for him to handle.

“I’m just trying to find one that’s too hot for me to eat, and I haven’t found it yet,” said Mitckes, a Peoria resident who works as roadside maintenance manager for the Illinois Department of Transportation in Springfield. “I want to find something that I bite into and say, ‘OK, that’s it. I won’t go any higher than that.’”
For the past 20 years, Mitckes, 58, has scoured catalogs, farmers markets and the Internet for new kinds of chile pepper seeds, which he plants in his backyard garden.

He trades different types of seeds with farmers and other chile pepper enthusiasts, has given presentations to schools and garden clubs and has taught classes on chile peppers at Illinois Central College in East Peoria.

“I’m just trying to get the word out,” he said. He hopes that if more people grow chile peppers in central Illinois, he’ll be able to find the ultimate hot pepper.

To reach his goal, Mitckes has a lot of different types of chile peppers to sort through. Paul Bosland, director of the Chile Pepper Institute at New Mexico State University, estimates there are at least 3,000 varieties of peppers, ranging from the mild bell pepper to mouth-scorchers like the habanero.

Chile peppers get their fire from capsaicin

Read the rest of the source article from the State Journal-Register

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