This is a tomatillo.

Don’t trust it.

It’s like a tomato that wants to be a watermelon.

Maybe if I had made salsa verde from scratch. But I’d bought one from HEB a week ago and had planned to use it. Kept forgetting. Tonight I made some guac — for you Yankees, that’s insider lingo for guacamole — and was going to dice up this little puppy and throw it in. First, though, I thought I’d try a sample, using the prudent approach akin to a few brush strokes in a corner of the room behind where the crib is going to be before painting the whole nursery chartreuse, or trying to remove the stain from one small swatch of my wife’s favorite cotton dress before dousing the entire thing in a tub of cupramonium hydroxide. (Don’t Google it; I already have: it dissolves cotton.)

See that slice taken out of the left side of the tomatillo whose mug shot is included herewith? I took a small bite of that small slice, and it was ENOUGH!

Maybe in salsa verde, amigo, but not in my guacamole. Not tonight. Not ever. (Maybe in salsa verde. I would consider salsa verde.)

And if its genus and binomial — Physalis ixocarpa — weren’t bad enough, this watermelon wannabe is a part of the “nightshade” family of plants.

Nightshade. I knew it.

Sounding more like the next lukewarm Marvel superhero than a worthy addition to my now near-perfected guac.

Not. One. Step. Further.