Burning Colon

the wife leaves Sunday for Houston for a week with work. i don't know if she will get a chance to step out and look for peppers but those of you in the Houston area, anyone know of a grocery store that may carry "yellow scotch bonnets". i have enough of the others, all i need is yellow scotch bonnet and i thought if a Houston market may have something like that, maybe she could venture out and pick up some fresh peppers.

i needed a classic cowboy fix and selected Winchester 73 from our local library, jimmy stewart stars.

i don't remember if i have ever seen this oldie before, uses all the classic cowboy lingo of the old west and once i started watching, i didn't want to move from the screen.

once i saw Will Geer(starred in many cowboy flicks and grandpa walton), i knew this would bring the kid out in me! top it all off i recognized tony curtis and rock hudson - i had to rewind - er, or, whatever it's called on digital, to make sure it was them. oh, and like many of the classics they tossed in a cowgirl for love interests - shelley winters.

got to take the movie back tomorrow..............what shall i look for?

thanks for reading.

you don't often see much on the dundicut, ya, you know all the "same ole, same ole". national pepper of pakistan, the scotch bonnet of pakistan, that kind of stuff.

i can purchase the dried pods at a local east indian store, they usually come in a small plastic bag and have the words "dried chili from pakistan" hand written in black marker on the bag, so you know the importer gets a monster box, hand bags them, then distributs them out to retailers that carry this product.

here is what was produced from the seeds, from the dried bag of pods that i purchased last year. the thing is packed wall to wall with seeds, the entire placenta is thick and attached are many, many seeds filling the entire pod. i can see why they are generally used dried because deseeding would be a nightmare to feed the large population of pakistan(perhaps that's why the export them!). In deseeding, it coughed up about 70 seeds.

As for flavour of the fresh pod, it tasted like a mild pungent ceyenne but had a bitter tone, that might be because of my cold growing conditions. heat value was like that of a low quality ceyenne. so if you could imagine a ceyenne with say a heat value of 30,000SHU, this would be about 15,000 - 20,000SHU.

don't buy into the scotch bonnet of pakistan, it tastes nothing like a chinense and is fully flavoured in the annuum tradition!

the plant itself grows tall like a ceyenne, its flowers are large, white, with that umbrella shape but a really nice creamy white. all the pods are consistent in size and shape turning from dark green like a bell pepper then migrates gracefully to the dull red colour. so, again much like a ceyenne as to compare the bright, glossy shine of a goatsweed.

i am guessing even pickling this pepper would be a challenge due to the lack of space in the pod, i guess one could try to slice slots along the sides of the pepper, then vinegar fill a jar. but they are nothing like a hot cherry pepper, though it too has a large volume of seeds, at least the cherry pod has some space for the vinegar to leech into.

well, i have 5 plants, they grow like weeds, think that's what i will do, pickle what i have when they ripen and give the plants away to my pakistani neighbours - i really need the growing room for other pepper types for my 2012 grow list.

hope you enjoyed the read and the picture. oh, i included the canadian and american 1 cent and 5 cent piece. if anyone knows Barack Obama's email address, i hear he is looking for a couple of trillions of dollars or so, well it appears he can find bucket loads in Canada as half of my change jars appear to be filled with US currency!

so, it only took 2 years but i harvested my first fatalii. last year i had 100% flower drop on my fatalii plants but after some nurturing and babysitting, i have 3 soil plants with flowers and pods and 1 younger plant in hydro that looks promising.

overall, it smelt like an intense orange hab and tastes very similar to an orange hab. i didn't get an explosive fruity flavour, just an intense orange hab. this was kind of a let down because i do have a prized orange hab plant that is 3 years old and has an absolutely wonderful flavour. the fatalii glistened with oil inside and the aroma filled the area as i cut into it. 9 seeds out of the pod, for the size i thought i may score 20-30 nope. 9!  the heat, i didn't ingest the full pod. i don't do that, nor am i a video taping kind of guy, i sliced of the end tip and ingested a piece about a 1/4" in length and it was definitely hotter than a standard store bought hab. my nose was dripping, lips and tip of my tongue burned, no back of the throat but then i only touched on a piece of the placenta.  that's it, that's as descriptive as i get.

now for some insignificant information, in the pic is the fatalii pod, along with our wonder canadian currency: top is a 25 cent piece, with the classic moosehead(called a quarter by most), below it is our 10 cent piece dawning "old bluenose" a clipper sailboat and champion of many world competitions(we refer to this piece as a dime). below it a 5 cent piece with our national animal the beaver(we called it a nickle - at one time it was made of nickle). finally, our penny, the 1 cent piece pictured with the canadian mapleleaf but for reference i put in a US penny. most of our coin currency mimics the american coinage.  Queen Elizabeth is pictured on the face of our coins.

now that the useless trivia is out of the way, here is the picture:

i have never saved tomato seeds but this year i bought a plant called Sweet, that's all it says, and true to its name, it is sweet and tasty. it is not a sweet 100, i have one beside it and though they appear very similiar, this Sweet is just has more robustness. i also have tumbler and red cherry but again this sweet is just a better product.

anywho, i plan on saving the seeds as the plant cost me $3.99 and that is not my normal practice, i usually buy a flat of 6 plants for $1 and if i can get them at .50 cents even better.

my question is, do i really have to put the seeds through the ferment process or can i just remove them from the pod, lay them out on a sheet and dry them, then store them away?