Peppers

Hello sweetie!!

I am slowly getting back into my routine after being weighed low by a bug.  I went out to harvest some peppers off of a plant that we had bought.  All in all, I think we actually bought 47 pepper plants.  Yes, 47.  :)  We joke "if it is worth doing, it is worth overdoing".  TWS loves to make his own seasoning pepper blends and I cook with bell peppers often.  Basically we just kept putting pepper plants in our cart until a slight but pervasive sense of plant-gluttony got to the "can't be ignored" level. :)

 

It is a pretty plant :)

The day's harvest.  We ended up with 1 jalapeño, a few bells, some hot banana peppers, and the misc peppers.

Peppers.  We do not know what kind they are. Too stubby for cayenne, not hot enough for boonie peppers.  No discernible flavor for a gourmet pepper.  However, when I need a bit of heat, these will do nicely.

Chopped the stems off.  The chopped stems looked very pretty to me--like Christmas ornaments or earrings :)

A tentative taste.  I was not sure how hot these peppers would be.  Turns out they were relatively hot, but not unbearably so.  However, they were ONLY hot--no pepper flavor, just heat.  Well, that is ok, but I wanted a more complex flavor, not just a hot sensation.  So I added in some hot banana peppers that were milder but had more actual flavor.

Hot banana peppers.  Probably the same heat as a mid-range jalapeño.  I sliced some for freezing, but chopped some for drying.

Here are my peppers ready for dehydrating.  My toaster oven has a dehydrate setting that works wonderfully for anything in small batches.  It took....hmm... maybe 2-3 hours?  

 After drying and cooling.  Ready to grind with my marble mortar and pestle.  I love this little thing!  It was inexpensive, made of marble, and pretty as it can be :)

 

It was easy to get the peppers to the "fish flake" level of ground.  Getting it all to powder did not quite work as the seeds did not break down easily.  I am not concerned...I can put it in a coffee grinder we have for this purpose if need be.

 

A little more ground....

 

These were the jalapenos and the hot banana peppers.  They went in a baggie of "seasoning peppers" in the freezer.

 

These are the bell peppers.  They went into the freezer as well.

I find pepper plants extremely economical if one can get even a few peppers off of them.  We got such a late start this year that I am not sure how many we will harvest, but this was a nice, small harvest for getting bacon on one's feet.  And I am certain that inhaling all the hot pepper powder was probably good for knocking this cold :)

I am eager to find and plant my boonie pepper seeds from Guam.  Those are an extremely hot pepper--a single pod can nicely warm a pan of lasagna.  There is a wonderful sauce called finadene sauce from Guam that I cannot wait to make.  I am sure I can make it with regular hot peppers, but I am convinced that only a real boonie pepper will do :).

What are you pulling from your garden, my friend?