Hot Pepper Jelly Burns Your Fingers.

Prologue:

I've never made jelly or canned anything so Im entering this venture wary of burns and botulism.

Ingredients:
Fresh anaheim peppers from my garden (red/green)
Liquid Pectin
Sugar
A Jar
A new lid

At the height of my veg preserving ambition, I made hot pepper jelly and found a few things to be useful bits of knowledge:

1) Wear Freakin Gloves! The pepper juice doesn't really burn at first but you will notice remnants when you wash your face later and splash peppery acid in your eyes. Though I washed my hands, it hung on like "an Alabama tick" and re-emerged at a very inopportune time.

2) Don't forget that cans pop. After sealing the jar, I nessled into my Tom Robbins novel, ignoring the rest of the world and was startled by a loud POP! hours later.

3) Try smaller jars. I was super pissed that after 48 hours of undisturbed setting time, my jelly was still syrupy. It wasn't until I poured off the top inch of solution that I found actual jelly. My anger subsided.

4) Cooking fresh peppers makes pepper spray! No really, I was all choked up and crying and laughing b/c, as I hovered over my boiling ingredients, the fumes gave me a punch. It was fascinating and hysterical at the same time.

5) I think that's about it. Oh, except, if you do happen to over cook the solution and the jelly doesnt coalgulate, don't forget that you can still use the mixture as a sauce. I used that ole syrupy inch in a stir fry and it was rad (see previous entry about MuscleMan).

Garden Veggies Entice MuscleMan to Eat Tofu!

I've been cooking a lot lately and my brother has been rad enough to be my guinea pig. He's a trainer/fighting person/nutritional guru and has been super supportive of my growing efforts. This dish is a super spicy tofu/veggie stir fry sauced-up with a hot-pepper jelly mixture I made from the over abundance of peppers yielded. He's never tried tofu and was a bit taken-aback by the texture but ate it nonetheless.

He looks happy. Great Success.

More Unchartered Territory

So, I have this vegetation, lots of vegetation. Naturally, the next step will be preserving the veg. Following suit with this entire journey, I have absolutely zero experience in preserving foodstuffs. Thank freakin goodness that there's a guerrilla army of homesteaders out there that also like to digitally publish their efforts. According to these die-hards, if I impale these anaheim peppers with needle and thread and hang them for a bit, I'll have a bushel of dried spicy treats for the winter. We'll see how they fare.

Meet Our Newest Member

Meet my new homey, Maple Syrup Sabin. She was a foster that I simply couldn't release so, we now have three pups. She's a Boxer Jack and is extremely clumbsy. Her interests include socks, kale and my underwear.

Another point of interest: she has no belly hair. Its painfully cute.

Welcome, Miss Maple, to our team!