pickled peppers

The weather this summer was not real conducive to ripening hot peppers. They grew like gangbusters, set flowers, and even produced many, many peppers - that then mostly just sat there waiting for it to get hot enough to ripen. Poor things. A few hungarians and jalapenos ripened to make red and green hot pepper jellies as well as a bit of hot sauce, but the others just seemed to be holding their breath. Then finally, last week, the lemon drops decided to go for it and there were about a half dozen cayennes that also took the plunge. So this weekend I picked all I could find and made a small batch of lemon drop hot pepper jelly and an even smaller batch of mixed hot pickled peppers. I haven't tried either of them yet, but they sure do look good. And I'm grateful they managed to hang on long enough to give me this much.

Next year about half the tomatoes and all of the peppers and eggplants will be grown in the greenhouse. They should love the extra heat.