In Which I Turn My Kitchen Into a Hazmat Site

We grew 18 pepper plants in 2011. One of those was a cayenne pepper and it was a bit of an impulse buy. Hubby Dear and I were looking at the pepper transplants for sale at a big box store in the next county and it caught our eye. We had never used fresh cayenne peppers before, but we felt that surely we could find something to do with them.

The collection of dried cayenne pepper pods

The plant did really well and produced hundreds of slender green fruits that ripened to a dark red. We decided that the best use of the cayennes would be to turn them into either crushed red pepper flakes or ground red pepper, so we laid them out in a corner of the kitchen to dry.

They have been dry for several months now, waiting for me to get off my tuchus and get around to grinding them. Yesterday was the fateful day.

Although you may wonder after you read about the rest of my misadventure, I'm not entirely clueless when it comes to chile peppers. I knew I should wear gloves while I was working with the cayennes so I didn't get any of the oils on me.  I put on a pair of gloves and began pulling off the stems of the peppers. After the stems were removed, it was a simple matter to shake out the seeds and then pop pieces of dried pepper into my spice grinder. Easy peasy, right?

When grinder was full of pepper pieces, I put the lid on and let it rip. It didn't take much grinding before I noticed pepper dust sprinkling my counter. Hmm, I guess the lid isn't exactly airtight. No matter. I proceeded on.

Then I started sneezing. Huge, messy, half-choking sneezes. Ever heard an elephant sneeze? Me neither, but I imagine that's what I sounded like.

Hubby Dear helpfully hinted that perhaps one of those N-95 masks I have stored would be useful at a moment like this. Since my gloved hands were covered in cayenne dust, he ventured out from living room, held his breath and hurriedly put the mask over my nose and mouth. He retreated quickly to watch his basketball game and thanked his lucky stars that he had an excuse for missing the kitchen shenanigans.  

In his haste to exit the premises, the Hubster hadn't properly situated the mask on my face. My exhalations were somehow getting channeled up towards my eyes. The moist air (keep in mind that the amount of cayenne pepper dust I had already inhaled had me breathing like Darth Vader) fogged my glasses. I'm not sure exactly what I did or how it happened, but the culminating event was a puff of cayenne launched into my eyeball.

To his credit, Hubby Dear did use the DVR to pause the game and check on me while I frantically washed my eye out with cold water. He sympathized with my irritated lungs during TV timeouts. Thanks, honey. I'm glad to know that I rank only slightly lower than our alma mater's basketball team. ;)

Nearly 1/2 c. of very potent ground red pepper

I only made it through half of our dried pepper pods before the above-described disaster. That yielded me nearly 1/2 a cup of ground red pepper, plenty for the next few months. It is much brighter in color than the cayenne I buy at the local grocery store. Hubby Dear says it smells really good, too. I can't say I've tried it yet. After the Unfortunate Incident and the following Hazmat-style cleanup, my lungs seize up if I even think about cayenne!

This may be my most painful exercise in self-sufficiency yet.





Postscript: Our 2012 garden plan includes more cayenne peppers. I guess some people will never learn!

What This Closet Prepper Got for Christmas

I am still "in the closet" about my prepping to my family and friends. I prefer it that way due to OPSEC concerns and to avoid the inevitable taunting. My dad and brother were discussing rifles at our family Christmas gathering. When I declared my interest in getting a rifle for shooting varmints, everyone got a look on their face like I had begun singing "Ta-ra-ra Boom-de-ay" and performing the Can-Can right there in the living room. I hadn't even mentioned anything about zombies! Yes, indeed, it is much easier for me just to stay under the radar.

However, that doesn't mean I can't receive prepping-related presents from my relatives for Christmas! I have two Amazon.com wish lists. One is public and has items that even a supposedly wimpy, squeamish person like myself would want. My other wishlist is set up to be private. I use it to keep track of more "hardcore" prepping items that I want to remember to add to our gear but do not want to let the whole world know about.  I was fortunate enough to receive a selection of items from my public wishlist and I thought I'd briefly review each. You may want to add these to your own wish lists!


1. A Coffee/Spice Grinder





Neither Hubby Dear nor I are coffee drinkers, so I didn't get this for the first function. Once you grind spices in a coffee grinder, you wouldn't want to use the grinder for coffee, anyway, unless you like your coffee to have a kick! Whole spices last longer than ground ones do, so they are better for long term storage. This little gizmo will quickly grind whole spices into a fine powder. I got this primarily to turn our homegrown cayenne peppers into ground red pepper. Stay tuned for an upcoming post on that process.


2. A Galvanized Chicken Fount

Both of my in-laws grew up on farms that raised chickens for eggs. They don't have the fondest memories of chicken keeping and I think they are privately expecting our chicken experiment to crash and burn. Nevertheless they bought me this chicken waterer. That's what you call love.

And now for the books....

3. The Heirloom Life Gardener by Jere and Emilee Gettle

Many of you are familiar with Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds. If you aren't, you should be! I truly admire the founder, Jere Gettle; how can you have anything but respect for someone who starts a groundbreaking seed company at the age of 17? When I found out that he had put out his own gardening book, I knew I had to have it.

Once I read it, however, I was a bit disappointed. Don't get me wrong. It is full of gorgeous pictures and it is an unintimidating introduction to gardening. I was sad for two reasons. First, it was written with such a bland voice. I am sure that anyone who wears the colorful duds that Jere Gettle favors is much more entertaining than this book lets on. (Do a Google search for him and look at the photos and see what I'm talking about!) Second, and most importantly, it just didn't have that much new information for me. It would look cute on my coffee table, but not get much use.

Here's my advice: just get the free Baker Creek catalog. Many of the photos and some of the text are reprinted there! If you are interested in more in-depth information, I prefer Seed to Seed for information on seed saving and All New Square Foot Gardening, Four-Season Harvest, Mini Farming, and The Resilient Gardener for general gardening info.

4. Chicken and Egg: A Memoir of Suburban Homesteading with 125 Recipes by Janice Cole

When my old college roommate read on Facebook that I was getting chickens, she recommended that I get this book. Since I love "city girl goes country" type memoirs, I thought this would be perfect for me and added it to my wish list. Chicken and Egg is a nice book, but I would classify it as mostly a cookbook with a bit of the author's life thrown in. The recipes look delicious and I'm sure to turn to this book once my 16 (!) prospective hens start laying. If you're looking for a true memoir, try The Dirty Life,which is one of the best books I read in 2011.

5. Make the Bread, Buy the Butter: What You Should and Shouldn't Cook from Scratch by Jennifer Reese

This book is based on a fun concept. What commonly store-bought foods are worth making yourself? Which should you have no guilt about purchasing? Jennifer Reese spent years perfecting recipes for items like Worcestershire sauce, Camembert, and tahini. This book reminds me of "Julie and Julia" - the movie, that is, not the book. (The movie was cute, but I do NOT recommend the book for those who are offended by foul language and loose morals. It made me feel dirty when I attempted to read it.)  I'm looking forward to trying some of the more obscure recipes in this book. I've made my own laundry detergent and grind my own wheat, so I guess this is the next logical step!

6. The Apple Grower by Michael Phillips

I'll admit that I was first attracted to this book because of the photo on the front cover. The author looks like my brother, a Deadhead and youthful-troublemaker turned responsible husband and father. That has nothing to do with apples or this book, but I thought I'd throw that in there! ;)

I had the chance to borrow the first edition of this book from our local library and I was immediately impressed. If you want to grow apples organically, this is a fabulous resource. The book I bought is the revised and expanded edition. It has color pictures and even more useful information. Hubby Dear and I will spend a lot of time pouring over this book and putting the information into practice.



7. The Small-Scale Poultry Flock: An All-Natural Approach to Raising Chickens and Other Fowl for Home and Market Growers by Harvey Ussery

I saved the best for last. I love, love, love this book. It is certainly the most helpful chicken book I have read, and believe me, I've read them A LOT of them. It has color pictures and is full of very down-to-earth, detailed advice. It is the perfect book for those of us who are interested in self-sufficiency since it gives instruction on how to grow your own feed and breed your own chicks. This book and Storey's Guide to Raising Chickens are destined to be my go-to guides on chickens.


Did you get or give any prepping-related gifts this Christmas? 

October in Review and November 2011 Preps

Is it just me or did October go by in the blink of an eye? I can hardly believe it is November and that Christmas is just around the corner. 

I don't feel like I did very much to prep this month. I bought a few new books to add to our survival library and added some odds and ends to our food storage (another gallon of oil and a few canned goods) but that's it. Hmm... I'll have to do better in November! 

I did have my first successful culinary experience with a Sun Oven.It makes me feel a lot more secure to know that I can bake bread without electricity - assuming that the sun is shining!

We also harvested the last tomatoes and peppers of the year. Both of the methods we are using to ripen green tomatoes are working well. It feels luxurious to have so many delicious tomatoes on hand when it is so cold outside.

Last, but certainly not least, we completed our chicken moat. I've wanted chickens for at least five years and I'm so excited that I finally get to buy chicks this spring! 

For November:

• We still need to plant the seed garlic we bought last month. Gotta get that in the ground soon.
• Our three pecan trees are due to be shipped soon so we'll be planting them as well.  
• I plan to process my pie pumpkins and freeze the pulp. The last of our cayenne peppers should finish drying this month and I'm planning on grinding them up for ground red pepper. We shall see if I can accomplish both of those objectives without chopping off any body parts or suffering wicked chile burns. 
• I've been using a borrowed Sun Oven for my solar oven experiments. I think I'm going to bite the bullet and buy one of my own. It is definitely an investment, but I think it is worth it. Yes, I've had some less than successful experiments, but I'm finally figuring out how to make the Sun Oven work for me. 
• I plan on taking advantage of the holiday sales to stock up on food storage items. I'm going to focus on chocolate chips, brownie mixes, sugar, flour, and other baking items. 
• Speaking of baking, I have a problem that I need your help with. It's time for another "Ask the Readers" post. Stay tuned for that later this week.

How did you prepare in October? What are your plans for this month?