Chilies From The Greenhouse... Two Hundred And Counting

The Top Section of a Double Boiler Containing 200 Chilies

Okay, so these are little guys -- the biggest of them about the size of your pinkie finger.

While they're not in the league of NM chilies, they're reasonably spicy and have a good flavor. Angel enjoys spicy food, but she has stomach problems that preclude chili-as-a-religious-experience levels of hotness. I usually put one of these (de-seeded) in a given dish. She tolerates that well and I get to think, to drift back in time...

Here's a Close-up!

Albert Fugere sent me the URL for a place in NM that sells several variety of chilies. Maybe next year I'll try some of those. I also grew poblanos and jalapenos but these came out about as mild as bell peppers. The jalapenos were at least flavorful -- especially after I roasted them over charcoal.

The Greenhouse seems to be a requirement for growing chilies at the 48th parallel. This year, I had an aphid infestation but it was manageable (each day I'd go out and pick 'em off my plants). Once the chilies began to ripen the aphids went away. Maybe they don't like chilies?  Serve 'em right.

Two hundred of these little guys add up to a lot of chilies. Not only that, I've got fifty or so more of them on the plants that aren't quite ripe yet. Someday I'd like to build a small (tabletop) solar food dryer that could manage a tray full of these chilies, but I'd need a table saw to do a good job with it. That's not going to happen; although I do have a neighbor who owns a table saw.  Maybe I could trade him some chilies if he'd do some cuts for me?

Anyway, these are small enough so that I can freeze them. We'll certainly have plenty to last through the winter.