Wonderful Chilli Goodness (And Marmalade)

Dear Cheeky,

You know that I love to cook, right? And when I can cook with things I've made or grown it makes me feel all kinds of productive and efficient. It's a real fake, but it's fun (and means I can spend ages in the kitchen, rather than doing other chores around the place!).

Mum planted chilli plants months ago, and they have been doing quite well, but I've not really done all that much with them. So I decided I'd better pick them, and try to use them before the frosts hit and they were ruined. I got so many chillies, it was a bit crazy.

There are also a whole heap of capsicums and some sort of chilli/capsicum hybrids. Not sure if they're mild chillies or if the capsicums have been growing too close to the chillies and picked up some of the spice (This can actually happen, I'm not making this up!). Either way, the smaller capsicums have a very tiny kick. It's awesome. 

Here they are, all sorted out. The ones in the basket are the capsicums, and then from left to right we have the dried chillies (they were still on the bushes but were getting dry, so I figured I'd continue drying them and store them that way) and then green chillies and red ones. They're all jalapenos and since I took this photo a couple of days ago a lot of the green ones have continued to ripen. I want to make some green curry paste, so I'd better hurry up and do that today. 

Ok, so what I've made with them. Let's see. 

Dried chillies I roasted in the oven on a low heat for a while, ground them up and now I have chilli powder and chilli flakes. 

I made a batch of pickled jalapenos that are wonderful on pizzas and Mexican food (let's ignore the fact that I spelt Jalapenos wrong on the label!). 

Best bit? I made sweet chilli sauce. I'm going to be making more of it, because I have so many red chillies, but I wanted to do a test run first, to make sure I could get the right consistency. In the past I've either made it too thin, so it's more a dipping sauce, or too thick, so it's like a jam. Both taste nice, but they're not the easiest to use. 

Look at all that wonderful sweet chilli goodness! 

I don't have a photo of the bottle of sweet chilli sauce because I gave it away without getting a pic. Not sure how I managed that, i was sure I'd taken a photo of it, but I'll be making more today so I can show you when I'm done if you'd like. 

I also made Marmalade. This wasn't using our oranges, but that will happen when our orange tree finally starts grow fruit. I made Orange and Ginger marmalade, and I know you're not a huge marmalade fan, but this stuff is delicious. 

I like taking photos of things in pots! 

We ended up with seven jars of marmalade, and we all had toast and marmalade at midnight so we could try it! You have to wait a few hours before it is set up enough to taste, and that meant about midnight. I'm not the only dork in this family. 

Ok, now I'm going to go make a card for my brother using my new stamp set. I'll show you that next time! 

Take care and yay for the competition idea. That's so much fun. 

Hugs

Dorky