Paula Piper's Pickled Peppers

It's almost that time of year to put the summer garden to bed for the winter. Gone are the days of hot, summer weather. Instead we're only up to 85 degrees everyday.

Winter is practically upon us! Time to break out the parkas!


But seriously, we really do intend on trying our garden again in the Spring, this time without all of the thrips. To do that, we have to build and then fill with specially treated dirt, the gardens in the fall so they will be ready for the Spring planting season.

That is, February.

Early in the season we lost our cucumbers and green beans to thrips. Then later on, we lost our tomatoes to heat and aphids.

The only thing to survive my obvious lack of gardening skill was the tiny jalapeno pepper plant.

Even though it's still only a small, pathetic little thing, I did just harvest 52 peppers from that tiny plant.

That's right. 52!!


They were small, plump, hot, sweet, and perfect little peppers. All 52 of them.

I know! 52!!!

What the heck am I going to do with 52 jalapenos?


I love the Internet. I really do. I found a good recipe, and with my 52 (52!!!) jalapenos, I made pickled peppers.

"If Paula Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers, how many peppers did Paula Piper pick?"

52.

52!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I sliced up those bad boys (wearing gloves, of course), put them in sterilized jars, covered them with a homemade pickling brine, and processed the closed jars for 10 minutes in boiling water.

After all of my hard work, we now have 6 jars full of delicious yet oh, so hot, pickled jalapenos in the fridge.

(Why in the fridge if I sterilized and jarred them? Oh, I'm a freak about botulism. In my other life I was headed into medicine where I wanted to study infectious diseases. In my years of study, I've come to respect the tiny bacteria that causes botulism. With it's nice endospore and endotoxin, I'm not one to play around with it. So what if I didn't process them correctly? I ain't dying over some darn pickled peppers, I can tell you that for sure.)

Moving on......

We have already eaten two jars and I'm relieved to say we are both alive and well.

They are super tasty on homemade nachos, in a breakfast egg and cheese sandwich, and popped into a morning omelet.

And all from my garden!