Peppers

Hello blog friends!

Today I have something a little different to show you.

My friend, Jen, had an abundance of peppers that she got

from her brothers abandoned garden.

She brought them to share with me and gave me

a ton of them.

Okay, so it wasn't a ton, but it was a LOT!

Here is what I got and that isn't even all that she had,

she shared with some others and had kept some for herself. 

 Now the question was, what do I do with all these peppers?

First of all, I had to figure out what they all were, so my 

oldest brother, who is my pepper expert told me.

Still what to do with them all?

I talked to my son, who had some ideas for me.
I shared some with him and then decided to dry some of them.

I cut up a bunch of them,

some of  each kind, laid them on cookie sheets and

popped them into the oven at 170* 

It took well over 12 hrs for them to dry, but dry they did.

These are my pablanos, when I got them from Jen,

we thought they were green bell peppers, so glad we didn't try

eating them!  They look awful, but I guess anything would

if it was dried in an oven over night.

Okay, I still had quite a few peppers left, so I talked to my 

brother again and he told me how to make hot sauce.

Here are my peppers, stems cut off and put in a pot with

vinegar, salt and garlic.

I let them simmer for quite a while, until they 

were cooked.

I let them cool a bit, then it was time for the blender.

They blended up so nice and smooth!

Luckily, I found these jars in my cupboard and could

fill them as well as the 8 I bought today.

Here are some ready to heat up in my hot water bath

to complete the canning process.

I'm pretty proud of myself, I've never done any canning

before, but I decided I'd do it and I did.

Got a bit of guidance from a couple friends and some

info from the internet and dove right in.

Here's what I ended up with.

And yes, there were a couple more to start.

One I dropped when I was putting it into the water bath,

the bottom fell right off the jar.  And one I 

dropped taking it out and it poured all over the stove top.

Considering I didn't really have the right things to pick them up

and to can them, I guess I did pretty well.

As for the taste?

I took a little taste of it and......

Oh boy is it hot sauce!

I'm calling it
Hot Mama's Hot Hot Sauce!

And these were still left.

I cut them up and froze them.

I also was given some green bell peppers by my friend

Judy.  I chopped those and froze them too.

I'd say I'm pretty well stocked on peppers.
One more thing to do with the peppers.
I plan to crush the dried ones,

some I'll store for cooking and some I'll use

to infuse some olive oil.

Jaryd and Sara infused some oil a couple years ago

at Christmas time and he has explained how he

did it to me.  Now to just get to it and 

infuse some oil.

Just have to figure out how I'm going to store that.

If you have any ideas for me, leave them in my comments.

I'll let y'all know how that goes too.

So glad you stopped by today,

like I often say, you never know what

you'll find on

Kristie Kreates.

See you again soon.