Chili harvest

This year my chili harvest is beginning to look good. Here are just a few of the first batch to ripen. I still have about 6 Peruvian Purple plants that are heavily loaded and I am waiting for them to ripen, four heavily laden Bishop's Crown plants, the new piri-piri (pil-pil) plant, a struggling Orange Habanero, three Italian Picante plants, Cherry bombs, Archez Negra, Sweet Mini Bell Peppers... the list goes on. Last night I made some pure chili paste while getting seeds for next years harvest. Mashed down a bunch of the Kenyan Minis that normally just drop off when slightly ripe along with a some Jalapenos and some Plum Bombs that would not fit in the pickling jar.

Today? I have warned before of the perils of working with chilies and capsaicin. Even taking good precautions, I was grinding chilies by hand in my cast iron pestle and mortar. My hands were covered with plastic bags as per usual but just the fumes from the crushed chilies caught in the sweat of my forearms. This morning my forearms are tingling quite badly. Photos of the two small, one medium jars that resulted to follow...