Ways I'm an Idiot, #327

Think way back now. Back to when I started growing those pepper plants from the seeds given me by Ster and the Somniloquist after their trip to Arizona. Some of those plants eventually made it into the garden, and 5 of them have grown into veritable bushes of jalepenos. "But what to do with so many jalepenos?" I asked myself. "Make hot sauce", saidI, "why not use this recipe?" and I indicated the following recipe, gleaned from Ham on the Street via foodnetwork.com.

Flaming Blast of Lime Hot Sauce

• 1/2 pound jalapeno peppers (about 6 large)
• 1 small onion
• 6 garlic cloves
• 2 cups apple cider vinegar
• 1/2 bunch cilantro
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 lime, juiced

Remove the tops from the peppers and cut them in half lengthwise. Clean out the seeds and ribs, give them a rough chop, and put them into a small saucepan. Roughly chop the onion and garlic and add it to the pan. Pour in the vinegar and bring it to a boil. Reduce the heat and simmer for 10 minutes. In the meantime, roughly chop the cilantro and put it into a blender along with the salt and lime juice. When the jalapeno mixture is cooked, add it to the blender. *Cover the blender, put a towel over the lid, and turn it on low. Once it is going, crank it up to the highest setting and puree for 3 minutes. Strain through a medium holed strainer and let cool. Pour into sterilized bottles and refrigerate. The hot sauce will keep for up to a month under refrigeration.

Since I'll be blending the peppers anyway, I decided to clean them up and toss them into a freezer bag as they reach full heat. When I've got enough for a huge multi-batch of the sauce, I'll whip it up and share with heat-loving friends. Well, today was the first harvest.

Let me say that I'd not forgotten the suffering my mother went through after crushing her home-grown cayenne peppers. It just somehow didn't seem to apply. Twenty minutes after harvesting a pound and ahlaf of jalapenos, I had a freezer bag partially full of seeded pepper halves. Twenty minutes after that, I had burning lips, hands and right eye. Worse yet, I expect I'll do the next phase of harvest exactly the same way. Like I said in the title. I'm an idiot.