A Touch of Frost

Jack Frost paid a tiny visit last night. Bill and Liam went out this evening to investigate the damage of a few hours at 0 C and came back with a rather positive report. Jack kindly left the tomatoes alone and touched his frost brush on the tips of the squash plants and a few of the pepper plants. But only on one side of the garden. I guess that when the weather man says "patchy frost" he really means it. So they picked all of the tomatoes, yet more broccoli, a few cucumbers, and heavens, could it be? Crimson hot peppers that were actually starting to become crimson!

Every year in January, the Stokes seed catalogue comes. January in my neck of the woods is bitterly cold and outdoors everything is frozen and covered in snow and ice. It will remain that way until usually the end of March. At which point we will have a few teasing weeks of spring like weather before getting hit by yet another snow storm. In January, spring seems a long ways away. But there is the catalogue of all the vegetables spread out like..... well.... only a northern gardener could really know what I am talking about... but .... I call it Garden Pr0n. You know what I mean. Some people take the Lee Valley catalogue to the bathroom. I take the seed catalogue. So there you are looking at page after page of plants. And variety! The last year that I counted there were 76 different types of tomatoes! 76! Sigh. And they also have a good number of peppers of both the hot and the sweet variety. The hot ones even have the Scoville rating so that you know what you are getting yourself in for!

But I digress.

So one January, a number of years ago, I was drooling over the various plants and came across the pepper section. "I want to try something new this year" was the thought that popped into my head (we are, after all, experimental eaters. At least we older ones are). So I started to check different pepper types and their Scoville rating and found that the crimson hot offered a fairly decent rating without my fearing the punch that some hot peppers can have. And lets face it, we have all had one of those experiences where something that went into our mouth was just a little too much to handle. The crimson hots were a respectable 1250-2500 on the Scoville scale, well bellow habenero's and well above some of the, ahem, wimpy peppers.

To make a long story longer, they were ordered, planted, tended, harvested, and then processed in to the most wonderful hot sauce that could be imagined. Go look. I know you want to. There is even a picture of the sexy little beauties. Sigh.

Wow! Was that ever a tangent! I think I need to go knit a few rows on my much neglected lace shawl. Remember that? I have almost finished the first 20 rows of the neck chart and will soon proceed to the body chart. Pathetic. I know. But I have a finish deadline for this thing of December 2013. I think that I will make it.

I love achievable goals.