Death by Capsaicide

Folks, I need to take a little mental break from posting about my father's decline in Oct/Nov 2012,  but I promise I will be back. I'm sure those who have watched a parent or loved one slip away will understand why. A year later, the memories of those final days still pervade almost every waking moment.  

 

After his ~18 hour recovery, we had a rather quiet stretch of about two weeks before we received our second "actively dying" phone call. I will touch on a few issues between now and when I pick this storyline up again, but not for a few days.

 

In the meantime on the home front, I plan to take down my garden this weekend, as even though I  prolonged the growing season for my pepper plants by covering them with a tarp for several of the coldest nights we had a week or so ago, I have more than enough green and ripening peppers to keep me in hot sauce and salsa for at least a year or two. Even though I really had to scale back my gardening plans this growing season, I am more than pleased with the overall results.

 

 

On and off, I've been gardening - both indoors and out - for almost 40 years. I've been growing all kinds of peppers from almost day one, and this year's crop of the hottest of the hot was turned into an insanely hot pepper sauce last weekend. Basic ingredients: peppers ( seeds and all ), vinegar, a little salt and a few cloves of garlic. I learned the trick of "finishing" the sauce and super-concentrating the "heat" from an old college professor of mine who was "organic" gardening decades before the USDA started to write rules defining what that meant. To this day, I remember my initial reaction ( couldn't breathe for ~10 seconds ) to his homegrown hot sauce and the "finishing" secrets he shared with me.

Dankeschön, Herr Disque.

 

Anyway, the combination of Moruga Scorpions, Bhut Jolokia Ghosts, Caribbean Red and Devil's Tongue peppers have created a sauce that is absolutely the hottest I've ever tasted, including all of what claim to be the hottest commercial products out there. With just a drop or two on a slice of pizza, the heat was instant....continued to build...and lasted for ~30 minutes. I can only imagine what a spoonful or two might do...but I won't be trying that amount anytime soon.

 

I've given out a few small jars to some of my co-workers and, so far, the feedback has ranged from "way too hot for me" to "you should sell this stuff."

 

Hmmm....perhaps I'm onto something for my retirement years.

Let's see....

DJ's InsaniSauce

Death by Capsaicide

HTHS (Hurts Twice Hot Sauce)

This could be fun, and I've got years to put it together.
 

Enjoy your weekend.