We’re having a slow summer this year with our garden, but between what we grow and what we get at the farmers market, we’re having lots of fresh salsa, and pico de gallo, which is a condiment/dip like salsa, but not as heavily tomato based. We chop peppers–lots, and some really hot–tomatoes, cucumbers, zuchinni, onions, garlic and corn off the cob with lime or lemon juice and a little salt and pepper (not much of either!). Let it sit and chill for an hour before serving, and wemake sure to have beer, water or lemonaid on hand…we get serious about the heat.

When there’s a LOT of peppers harvested, I like to chop them up into a big mixing  bowl along with onions and garlic and add just enough olive oil to coat the whole mix, then drop by the heaping teaspoon-full into ice cube trays. We freeze up these “pepper pucks” and then pop them out and transfer to freezer bags. One or two pepperpucks added to soups, chilis, lasagna, casserole, stir fry or whatever we are cooking up  keeps the fresh pepper taste happening all year round. I make each batch a different level of heat. We don’t do mild, but we DO have some that are in the special XXX bag, and those have some habenero in them along with other peppers.  Scoville Units are how pepper’s capsacian  heat levels are measured, and habeneros and others in the scotch bonnet family are among THE hottest of all, coming in at 300,000 SU…I wear gloves and safety glasses when I prepare those! But OH MY do they add a great value to my chicken soup! This year, we managed to get five habenero plants to sprout out of all the seeds we planted, along with thai dragons, tobasco chilis, and cayennes. We also dry and grind a lot of peppers, and are VERY careful how much we use at a time. One time I rinsed out the pepper dust  that remained in of the food processer after grinding into a vat of soup stock, and it was too hot to eat, even for us!! (I had to freeze it in portions to add to other soups)