Thanks - they were predicting freezing rain today, snow tomorrow so I harvested green ones, pulled whole plants (I read you can hang them like tomatoes) and hung them in the basement, and dug some others up yesterday, put the pots in the garage. My biggest one (18" tall x 36" wide) didn't look so good this AM - and lots of green pods, so I may have to hang that one. Made 2 batches (8 pints) of pickled peppers (rings and whole) today, house smells like boiling vinegar! Tomorrow I start the jelly. Froze some big Numex chiles for chile relleno casserole, but I've got to get some ground meat and make stuffed bell peppers, I've got some nice ones that I don't want to cut up for jelly or salad. Too bad my kids don't like stuffed peppers. And now the forecast changed! It was pretty nice today, rain tomorrow, freezing temps tomorrow night and snow maybe this weekend, but I could have spent 2 days prepping (and maybe that big plant would be doing better). I've still got 2 big Thai plants in the ground, I should have harvested ripe pods today but they're covered with a tarp - have to see what I can cut off tomorrow or Friday. I don't use the Thais too much, have a bunch in the fridge, so no great loss.

I made salsa verde and used my garden tomatillos and red cherry bomb peppers and all the other stuff in salsa. Really good. I also stuffed the cherry bomb peppers with cheese (whatever you like) a daub of honey, topped with a bit of butter, then grilled on the barbecue for about 10 or 15 min. on the cool part of the grill. Delicious little side! I have an aversion to very hot things and I didn't find the cherry bombs hot at all, just tasty. I will be putting more of these plants in my garden next year along with the tomatillos.

Dry them, grind them. Should keep for a couple years if you keep it in a dry place. Sprinkle on anything you want. Try your breakfast cereal. I use my surplus ground pepper for large batches of spicy beef jerky. Habanero jerky is the best so far. It also gives me an excuse to hang out in the backyard all day drinking beer, bbqing, and smoking jerky. Sometimes we brew beer too. =)

bmorepanic- I've know you're a frequent poster so I was pretty sure you were okay, but I just wanted to be sure! Getting the right tone can be so difficult online. I really like that 1/2 round table, BTW. Is that Scherrs or DIY? Angie- Skytrain, US Navy retired! Went on to fly GIII, but the handle is stuck. Mixed hardwood drawer boxes are one of the Scherrs options that's less expensive than the solid cherry. Here's one of the coolest things about working with Scherrs: I wanted that micro/convection combo wall oven lower than standard because I didn't want to be reaching up and over a hot oven door to pull out a heavy pan, like at my SIL's house. So I talked to Leon and told him about how high I wanted it, and then said, I want the cabinet above to be able to hold full-sized sheet pans (it's got those dividers for sheet pans and pizza trays and a pizza peel and cutting boards), and then make the cabinet above the size of whatever is left over. Then, however high that top cabinet above the wall oven turns out, the ones on top all along the left side have to match that height, whatever it is. Dang, I just remembered that I still need to get glass for those glass-front doors. Obviously I never use anything in there. Also, FYI, if you couldn't tell, the cabinets are all 30" deep with 27" pullouts, uppers 15" deep and set higher off the countertop than normal, 22", so that stuff would fit under them, such as mixer and coffee maker. The customization you can do with Scherrs is wonderful!