One year after we moved into our first home, my husband Christian spent an entire weekend, endless summer evenings, and more money than either of us would like to admit, building and caring for plants in a four foot by four foot raised garden bed in the only sunshine that can permeate the dense, mature trees that surround our house.
We got one tomato that summer.
The next year, our neighborhood association broke ground for a community garden. Christian rushed to sign up for a plot, because he just knew that the key to having a bounty of home grown fruits and veggies was more sunshine. Once again, he lovingly tilled the soil, added compost, and planted a variety of plants, including free pepper plants from the county community garden organizer.
It rained what felt like every other day that summer and all the tomatoes, beans, and zucchini that we had anticipated never came (though the plants were beautiful). Instead, we had bushels and bushels of these tiny lime green peppers. We didn’t know if they were hot or what we could even use them for.
After some research, we found that they were casabella peppers and were pretty spicy for our taste buds. But, we needed to do something with them quick, before the only product from our garden went to waste. Christian began researching and came up with a plan to cook and can the peppers into salsa sans tomatoes – and Pepper Pepper Hot Sauce was born.
The result was a crowd pleaser. Even though we used it as a sauce to give our meals a kick, our friends and families ate it straight with just tortilla chips.
That was three years ago and Christian has had requests for refills every year since. In addition to the original Pepper Pepper Hot Sauce, Christian has had fun experimenting with jams, apple butter, and smoked pepper sauces – all with a casabella kick.
As he says it, the gardening, cooking and canning is his “way to unwind”, so while he does all the manual labor, I hope to be able to share with you the ways our family enjoys the fruits of Christian’s “relaxing” and the adventures we go on to source the ingredients we don’t or can’t grow ourselves.
Enjoy!
~Elise
Great Dane Gardens 