The Scary Truth About Pure Peppermint Extract

So yesterday I had another new experience.
  This one was not quite as pleasant as the discovery that yoga could actually be fun. Nope. This one was painful, quite literally, painful.  My extraordinary and vivacious friend, Jo, was over. (She's pictured below.) We took it upon ourselves ( for the good of the population within my household) to bake some Thin Mint cookies. It's a simple process really. The recipe called for pure peppermint extract, emphasizing the pure thing.

Jo and I, friends for the past 9 years

  So, without realizing that I was holding an extremely dangerous substance, I began pouring a teaspoon of this pure peppermint into the almond-bark melting over the stove. It all happened very quickly. A bit of this potent  stuff dripped into the flaming burner. Suddenly, there was fire crawling up the side of the pan and then the peppermint bottle, and to my astonishment, my own pointer and middle finger were ablaze. Yep. That was my new experience, lighting myself on fire. I can tell you this, there was nothing so surreal as staring for a split-second at my hand and thinking, "Well.... that's weird, I think I'm on fire!" And then another second passed and Jo was yelling, "You're on fire!!!" So I started waving my hand around like a panicked toddler, Jo was throwing a bag of hamburger buns into the sink that somehow had caught fire too, and I managed, I'm not exactly sure how, to put out my own hand. The alcohol, um I mean, peppermint had poured onto the kitchen tile, and a little wall of flames were licking the air. Thankfully, nothing disastrous happened. The only thing damaged was my stinging and gradually growing finger. Upon further investigation, we found that the peppermint extract was 91% alcohol. Explains, everything right?
 After the initial terror and application of ice to my swelling battle wound, Jo and I nearly died of laughter. I proceeded to call my boyfriend and explain how peppermint had nearly taken my life. And yet... I lived to tell the tale. Life Lesson: Beware the power of PURE peppermint extract.
P.S.- The Thin Mints were really, really good.