The Barefoot Kitchen Witch

Habanero Gold

Hot Paper Lantern Habanero Peppers, ripening in our garden.

We grew a variety of hot peppers this year and, amazingly, they’ve all done really well.  We’ve made fresh salsa with them, and recently I canned some Jalapeno salsa and will probably make another batch of that when more of the peppers have reached maturity.

A couple of years ago our friend, John, made some sort of hot pepper jam or marmalade and gave us a jar.  I don’t remember all the details, just that it was hot and sweet and completely addictive. 

With our lovely selection of peppers this year, I really wanted to make a jam or jelly myself.  Over the winter I’d gone through various canning books and recipes, and marked the pages of the jellies I wanted to try.  And finally, with our peppers ripening, and some of them turning brilliant shades of red, it was time.

Red Pork Curry

From the book Keo’s Thai Cuisine, by Keo Sananikone, page 135.

Sunday Morning Notes

Happy 4th, everyone!

Well, working on the house continues.  The sprayer we bought is well worth the money spent in terms of time saved and sanity retained.  Here's the status update, for any of you interested...

Jalapeno Cheddar - Batch #1

You know how when you start learning how to do something new, you feel completely inept at the beginning?  Despite your best intentions, you still find yourself flailing around, flinging whey all over the place and hoping that you haven't contaminated anything, because if you have, you won't find out about it for another couple of months at least, and it would really be awful if you spent all this time and milk for nothing.  Or your carefully but precariously constructed "cheese press" thing slips off-balance and crashes to the floor.  Twice.  But then...somehow...when you are going through all of this insanity again, suddenly things seem to be working better, and you almost feel worried that that's a BAD sign, because maybe it means that the next glitch will be even BIGGER.

That's about the stage I'm at.

Smokey Hot Turkey Chipotle Macaroni and Cheese

Recently the stars and planets were aligned just right and so I made a big batch of macaroni and cheese.  A big batch and a smaller one, actually.

Green Thai Shrimp Curry

I recently posted pictures from our pepper harvest over on my little gardening site.  (That site, incidentally, tends to consist more of pictures of what we're growing than it does any useful gardening information.  Probably because Bill is the gardener, but I am the blogger/photographer.)

Anyway, in case any of you saw the peppers - lots and lots of long, twisty cayennes, mostly - and in case any of you were wondering what we were planning to do with all the peppers, I'm going to tell you. 

Green Thai Curry Paste

This is from the book Keo's Thai Cuisine, written by Keo Sananikone and published in 1986.  It's one of our favorite curry pastes.

Two Cucumber Recipes

I don't know about you, but we've got a bumper crop of cucumbers.  Fortunately we all like them.  And fortunately we have two tried-and-true recipes to trot out when we feel like showing off.  Actually - I can't lay claim to either of these.  Bill's the one who found them and who usually makes them.