Warming it Up!

Our heat pump just doesn't do the job in winter.  I'm not a fan.  It just doesn't do an adequate job of keeping the house warm.  We've kind of thrown in the towel and keep roaring fires going in our fireplace as we sit in front of it each night.  Our nightly routine while warming in front of the fire is watching "All Creatures Great and Small" and then playing Solitaire together.  I think we have one more cold snap this weekend and then it looks to be more balmy for at least the next week.

We're not the only thing that's cold.  Our honey is too!  Raw honey will crystallize in the winter.  Although a nuisance, it's the way you know you're getting the good stuff.  We have case after case of honey that has all crystallized.  Just like this!:

Many people just put it in the microwave and nuke it, but don't do that!  You'll cook all the good stuff out of it.  You want to gradually warm it, but never let it get more than 104 degrees Fahrenheit or you'll destroy the nutrients, enzymes and health benefits you naturally get from raw local honey.  Some people will put it on the dash of their vehicle in the sun to liquify it, some have built solar heat boxes to liquify it.

We've come up with an idea that works for us.  We use our egg incubator to gently warm the honey.  The issue we dealt with is that the incubator has warming coils on top but not at the bottom.  This resulted in the honey liquifying on top but not on the bottom.  To solve this, we placed a bread proofing heating pad on the bottom.  Now the honey is getting heated from top to bottom and we're monitoring the temperature that's on a thermostat to ensure we never get the honey too hot.

Let's peek in the incubator to see how things are going.  Compare the first photo above with this one.  You can see that the honey in the incubator is about three quarters of the way toward becoming liquid again.

As we sell the honey, we rotate crystallized jars of honey from the box and into the incubator so that the honey goes from the solid state to a liquid one.

Jalapeno Hot Sauce (Part II)

Way back on November 30th, we showed how Benjamin and I made Jalapeno Hot Sauce.  Well, it turned out so good, that it is gone!  In a little over a month we devoured a quart of the stuff.  Rather than being a hot sauce like Tabasco, Crystal, or Louisiana Hot Sauce, it was more like chow-chow.  It was good, but not really a liquid.  To put it on eggs or rice and beans or anything else for that matter, you had to use a spoon.  That's not really a problem, but we wanted to make a hot sauce that flowed.

We have so many peppers!  Jalapenos, Anaheims, bell peppers, criolla sellas.  We're going to make jalapeno hot sauce with these and then dry the rest of them and make ground jalapeno pepper for seasoning. 

For this recipe, we'll use the following:

• 20 jalapenos
• 1/2 cup onion
• 3 garlic cloves
• salt
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 2 cups water
• 1 cup white vinegar

I sliced up the jalapenos, minced the garlic and chopped the onions.

I splashed the olive oil in the bottom of the Dutch oven and sautéed the peppers, onion, and garlic for about five minutes on high heat.  I added salt.

The aroma of the mixture permeated the kitchen.  It cleared out my sinuses!

Then I added the two cups of water and let it cook for about 15 minutes.

All the liquid was boiled off, leaving the jalapeno/onion/garlic mixture.  I pulled off the burner and allowed it to come to room temperature.

This was put into the food processor and as I pureed it, I poured the 1 cup of white vinegar into the processor.

Once liquified, I used a funnel to pour the jalapeno pepper sauce into 2 hot sauce bottles that we had saved.

Tonight, Tricia made a Beef Vegetable soup.  It was fresh.  Everything came from right here on our little farm.  It was raining outside and chilly, so the hot soup hit the spot.  I was able to test our new pepper sauce.  I unscrewed the cap and poured several squirts of hot sauce in the soup.  It flowed!  The flavor was GOOD!  Spicy, with a kick.  This is a keeper!