Today some of the beauties will be out for a few hours. The weather forecast is 20°C, no rain but a bit windy. I hope that is ok for the chillies. I also put the flowering plants outside. Fingers crossed the bees will find them.
My babies are growing so well. Now you can clearly see the difference between the two types of chillie plant: On the left a Habanero, a bit bushy, and on the right an Ufo, a taller plant.
Next week will be the first time I leave my sweethearts alone for a few days. I am curious to see how they look when I get back.
Look at this beauty :)
The chillies are doing very well.
They are still inside but today I am going to prepare the garden so I can move the chillies outside as soon as the temperature allows. Which is not going to be today or tomorrow, because the weather forecast says it will snow, brrrrrr!
Oops, something went wrong. Two pots, same soil, same water, same sun, both ufo chilli seeds. The plants in the left pot have died, but the plant in the right pot is doing very well.
We ran out of our favourite sweet chilli sauce last night (It's from The Happy Pug, in Mareeba, far north Qld).
Anyway, it seemed silly to order more from the other end of the state, so I made some.
Here are two potentially dangerous* bottles of Sweet Chilli and Ginger sauce.
I didn't have cayenne chillies, so I used my frozen stash of home grown chillies, mostly habanero but a couple of ghosts, so while it is indeed sweet, it also packs a punch.
The vinegar used is also home made apple cider vinegar, aged for must be 6 years by now.
Decided I need to stay home today, it's grim as fuck outside, every bit of my body aches, and I'm struggling to face reality.
So it's time to do something about the fact the house is full of piles, trays, containers, and bags of rotting #chillies. (Kat says they're pre- #fermenting... which is a nice sophisticated way of saying rotting 😅).
First a tray of nice looking specimens for freezing.
And fill the dehydrator with an appropriate selection too.
The green Rocoto Marlene #chilli mash is now in a #fermentation jar in the one warm room in the house, as is a mash made of mainly red(ish) Naga Morich chillies with added red capsicum and padrons to get them used up (before they rot) and build up the volume, a handful of ripe-ish big black mammas ended up in this too. Plenty hot!
Plan with these is to make both red and green tobasco-esque #pepper sauce.
Both are 6% Himalayan pink salt* by weight with 2tbsp of added known-good lacto brine.
There is a mesh strainer containing under 500g of mixed green-ish #chilli fruit on the bench, sat over a metal bowl. These have 1tbsp salt on them and will sit and salt (extracting moisture) until later in the evening when I plan to make a sort of hari mirch ka achar (green chilli #pickle).
This is about 50% big black mamma with the other 50% being a mix of green padrons, serrano, whippet tail, and naga morich fruit.
Meanwhile Kat cleaned up some of the nicer looking Bishop's Crown and Sugar Rush (not so) Stripey #chilli fruit and packed them into a couple of Weck jars. I have now poured some boiling spiced sweetened vinegar mix over them.
Still harvesting useful tomato crop at the #allotment#polytunnel. It's hard to know when to give up. But given last night's 1.73°C minimum it's probably time to be thinking "green tomato chutney".
Actually spent far more time in the #allotment#polytunnel. A quick tomato harvest, but then a big finicky #chilli harvest. Thankfully the warm start to October has given us some ripe chillies.
We have a load of Wraith (pale ones) which will make a nice sauce. Also I picked a load of those green as they have a good fruity flavour so should make a nice fermented sauce.
Probably going to just freeze the rest of the small superhot crop, not enough to keep both whole chillies & make sauce.
The "Tangerine Tiger" chillies from Fatalii seeds are pretty spectacular.
Alas, their beauty is only skin deep — I'm not super impressed by their flavour, there just isn't much to it. Medium/low spice level, I can eat a whole lengthwise half of one without any fuss.
Wondering if rats are stupid enough to fall for my tricks.... 6 months ago in autumn I planted elephant garlic and got nothing. Spring hits and I get a couple of shoots. Then a rat (gormet little so and so) graws one off at ground level. I also have an excess of cayenne chillies growing. I'm hoping to teach rat to not eat the remaining garlic shoots there...