Hot Sauce: How To

This is the third time I've made a batch of hot sauce. The first batch was habanero, the second was mango habanero and this is a verde sauce with jalapeño and tomatillo. 

The process is the same, but you can pretty much add whatever you like and add as much peppers as you want.

Step One:

Get some hot peppers (maybe 14 habaneros or jalapeños), onion (1 medium), garlic (3-5 cloves)and tomato (1 or 2) (or carrot or mango or whatever else your into.

Get all your vegetables grilling on a cast iron pan.

Once they get soft and charred, move them to a separate pot.

Add about 1.5 cups of vinegar and 2 tablespoons of salt.

You can also add lime juice at this time and I sometimes add a couple drops of liquid smoke and a pinch of sugar.

Then blend the whole thing down, either in a blender or with an immersion blender.

I like to mix in about a 1/2 teaspoon of xanthan gum at this time, but that's not necessary.

I haven't messed around with cilantro yet, but I assume you would add it when you add the salt and vinegar and blend it in.

Throw it in some empty containers and call it a day.

Topping/Cutting Experiment

Here we have a Trinidad Moruga Scorpion. I cut the top off to see if that will make it grow out more.

Then I planted the top in some soil. Will this grow a new pepper? Probably not, but some people can grow new plants from cuttings and I'd like to accomplish this.

Coffee

The first thing you read on money saving articles and blogs is usually to cut out the expensive Starbucks and make coffee at home, which I do. But I've got to wondering, how much do I spend on coffee?

I just bought a 12 oz. bag of coffee for $7. Let's see how long it lasts. 

Checking in 8 days later, it looks like we have 2 more days left of coffee or so. I'd say about 13-15 days worth between myself and my domestic partner.  I also bought some new coffee this week for $6.

In conclusion, we're looking at about $0.40-$0.50 per day per person on coffee.

So next time I click on some fake internet article that says we can do X for the price of a cup of coffee a day, they better mean $0.40-0.50 cents a day.

Annualized, $365 per year for two people to drink coffee everyday seems like a good enough deal when you consider how vitally important coffee is in getting you through the day. 

Compost Part 2

Found a new composter on sale at Curb Mart. This one is a drum that can spin. Let's see how it works.

Here it is.

Filled with leaves from last fall.

And now we wait.

Dustins Adopted Garden

MIddle western pickled turnips

Have you ever been to a family run Lebanese restaurant and got your falafel sammich and wondered what those purple/pink thingies in there were? They're cooling, crisp, different. What are they? It turns out they are pickled turnips. I found out they love pickled things in middle eastern cuisine. Who knew?

Let's make some. First start buy purchasing some turnips at your local grocer. Have you ever bought turnips? Ever even eaten one? Do you know what they look like? These are all firsts for me. They're not that cheap at $2.5/lb, but were easy to find. Next you need beets. Now these are readily available in canned stewed form. They smell terrible and I also have ever tasted them. Fresh beets were harder to find. I had to buy organic and it was $3.5 for three beets. Anywho, I was able to capitalism them at the local middle class grocer so all is well. Let's pickle.

In addition to the turnips and beats you'll need garlic, bay leaves, salt, vinegar, h2o, and some canning jars.

You need to peel the outer layer off the turnips and beets. My finely honed knives did the trick.

The beet is crazy. It has this beautiful layering. The color is so deep dark blood red. Wow. We probably should be eating these. Slice the beats into discs and the turnips into french-fry like cuts.

Separately boil your mason jars to cleanse them and treat them for the addition of boiling water. I then added the beats at the bottom followed by the addition of the turnips. I pushed as many into there as I could. Bay leaves were added and I pressed a garlic clove as the final addition.

Then I added the pickling solution. 1.5 C water, 0.5 C vinegar, 1/6th C salt. I brought that solution to a boil and added it to the jars.

Can you see the pink from the beets staining the turnips? Just wait a few days and they should be purple/pink goodness.