Dianne, You're welcome. I have been on a pepper-processing marathon since they have overperformed this year, and it is seemingly impossible to make anything too hot for our darling new daughter-in-law. (Lord knows that if the stuff I've made these last couple of weeks isn't hot enough for her, it won't be because I haven't tried!) Have you ever made Habanero Gold jelly? It is incredibly good and it uses dried apricots as the base flavor, and you spice it up with onion and peppers. The onion and peppers are diced into 1/8" pieces, which is very tedious BUT gives you a beautiful golden jelly with confetti-like pieces of peppers and onions suspended in the jelly like little pieces of confetti. I've made several batches. I started out following the directions exactly, and that batch, which has 1/4 cup of habaneros was a pleasant blend of hot and sweet that even I can eat. So, striving to make it hotter for DH and DDIL, I altered the next batch to double the peppers to 1/2 cup, which can be done safely by decreasing the amount of sweet red bell and red onion by 1/4 cup. That was a lot hotter,but probably not hot enough for them. So, in the most recent batch, I tripled the habs to 3/4s of a cup, and further reduced the sweet red bell/red onion part of the recipe accordingly. The Extra Extra Hot Habanero Gold actually is very, very hot and I am not going to attempt a batch with 1 full cup of habaneros because I don't think anyone could eat it. I had the tiniest taste of the Extra Extra Hot and was sure I had burned a hole in my tongue. I think I have made 5 or 6 batches of Habanero Gold this summer, all because the darned habaneros just wouldn't stop pumping out peppers. Then, 3 of the 4 habanero plants abrupted wilted and died and I took them out, which yielded a huge amount of habs stripped off the dead plants and I've been struggling with this pile of habs all week. Another day or two, and they'll be history. (I still have the equally hot, if not hotter, Red Savina peppers growing though.) It also has been a long salsa summer. I know I have made at least 6 batches of canned salsa, and every single one of them from a different recipe so we'll have a wide variety of flavors from which to choose. I'm still not sure I've reached the ultimate degree of hot salsa that DDIL craves, but I'm getting there. I believe I have at least 3 more batches of hotter salsa left to put up if the peppers and tomatoes cooperate. These will have more habaneros and serranos and maybe some chile tepins as well. My favorite salsa so far this summer has five different kinds of hot pepper that smelled hotter than h-e-double hockey sticks when we had cut up all the raw ingredients and first combined them into the big stockpot. Once it was cooked and blended, though, it didn't taste as hot as it had smelled. It is a great salsa, but it isn't going to burn anyone's taste buds off their tongue. While the onions and potatoes underperformed this summer (that foot of rain in one day in April was very hard on them), the peppers and tomatoes have made up for it, so I've been a pepper-preserving maniac, with hundreds of peppers in the freezer and all kinds of preserved peppers, including bread-and-butter jalapenos, canned jalapeno rings, and bread-and-butter habaneros (mixed with some other peppers to tone down the heat--and the heat is incredibly high). I suspect that I could skip growing peppers next year because I have at least a two year's supply preserved and plants still covered in more peppers, but I'll grow them next year for fresh eating anyway. My son insists that no matter how much salsa is canned and put away in the root cellar (actually, it is a tornado shelter if you want to get picky!), "it won't be enough". I am actually getting tired of peppers and tomatoes and have started making fruit jams and jellies now because we like homemade ones better than those from the store. It has been a great pepper year, so maybe I'll mix some peppers into some of the fruit jellies. I wonder what Strawberry-Jalapeno or Strawberry-Habanero would taste like? I've linked one of the many Hananero Gold threads from the Harvest Forum below. I think both the big batch and the original batch recipes are in the second post on this thread. I've used up all my dried apricots and might try the next batch with either dried pears or dried peaches.\ Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: Habanero Gold Thread From Harvest Forum

Umm, how many (cups of) peppers did you put in the pot to make how many jars of jelly? The vinegar/pepper mixture can give off some nasty fumes when heated, but I make pepper jelly every year (jalapenos and Hinkelhatz, no habs) as well as salsa and never had a problem with cleaning the pots - though if I don't wear gloves (come on, they're just jals - right!) after a couple cups of diced peppers the cuticles start burning). All you have to do with jelly pot is rinse in hot water and stick in DW - it comes off really easy, salsa tends to leave a line and may need scrubbing.

I'll echo the statement that red savinas are erratic as far as heat goes. You do get SOME really hot pods off them. If I want a red habanero I'd go with carribean reds which produce as well if not better under adverse conditions and are more consistent with the heat/pungency. Chocolate habs would probably be the hottest I've grown and are also consistent. You really do have to remember that growing conditions will play a part in the heat and flavor of the peppers so YMMV compared to others. Red Savina is the world record holder(at the moment) so its nice to be able to say you are growing the hottest pepper but unless you have a really reputable seed supplier there is also a good chance of growing Carribean Reds since I've seen quite a few online dealers and nurseries claim that Red Savina and Carribean reds are the same cultivar. Since Reimer's has been mentioned I can't go without stating that Reimer's is the most dis-reputable seed dealer on the internet or anywhere else. I base this off personal experience as well as correspondence with many chile-heads over the years who suffered the same treatment as myself at their hands. Reimer's should definitely be avoided and if you refuse to heed a friendly warning then I would suggest that you at least have some form of back-up plan for when your seeds from reimers don't germinate so your growing season isn't completely ruined.

thanks ottawapepper i've seen this site, lots of recipes. your bbq sauce does however look interesting. good spice combo. silly question, but why heat. i made the mistake of adding a touch of classic yellow mustard to my sweet yellow sauce. a big No. tried correcting, still missing something. added heat. it taste different everytime. not sure what to expect with the use of heat. how long before it stabilizes. hey Jj no problema. send me your address, i'll get it out to you tomorrow.