And just think...instead of Ring of Fire, it will be Snap, Crackle, Pop! Seriously, I think you can probably consume a lot more rubber than that before any damage occurs...may even give you more bounce to your step!! Better quit while I am still sitting down! Just think about the kid who asked his old man, at the dinner table, if caterpillars were good to eat? His father told him not to ask questions like that, when everyone was eating! then his mother asked "Junior, why did you ask that question?" So he said" well, there was one in dad's salad, but it's gone now!" Cheers, old Doug in BC Tom D Compton wrote: > Here is a question for all the experts out there. I usually just lurk > and learn, but this time I need some real help. Every fall I harvest all > my hot peppers and smoke them for a few hours with hickory or mesquite > chips. I finish the drying overnight in a food dehydrator and then grind > the peppers along with garlic powder, cumin, and salt into a wonderful > smoky chile powder. > > I screw a canning jar onto my blender blade assembly and grind the > peppers right in the container. As the volume decreases, I keep adding > dried peppers till all is ground and the jar is full. This year, almost > at the end, when I unscrewed the blade to add a few more peppers, I found > about a one inch chunk of the (rubber?) gasket missing. It must have > been hooked under the blade and is presumably ground up in the pepper > mixture. I now have nearly a pint of chile powder contaminated with > whatever the gasket is made of. This represents this year's entire > harvest, and I hate to throw it out. I'm sure the small piece of rubber > will not noticeably affect the flavor, but I'm concerned about the > safety. Is that gasket going to be toxic, or is it inert? > > I will greatly appreciate your reply. > > Tom >