Sweet & Spicy pt. 1

Geez Louise its been a long time since I've been here.  I've got about a dozen small works in progress that I want to share with you but they're still works in progress and I want to wait until they're finished to show all the pictures.  This is double motivation to get them finished. 

One project that is partially in progress is our Christmas gift baskets.  Every year Noah and I compile a basket full of mostly homemade goodies to share with our friends and neighbors.  This year, we decided our theme would be Sweet & Spicy.  The baskets will include apple & cinnamon candles made by Noah, some homemade candy, firecrackers (saltines with spicy stuff on them, basically) and some homemade hot sauce.  The hot sauce was what we worked on today. 

We have 4 chili petine bushes growing in our backyard.  They were planted there by the neighborhood birds.  Since I love things that grow stuff I can eat, I've pretty much left them alone.  Well, Noah's mom mentioned that when she was a kid, her mom used to make a hot sauce out of them and kept a little pitcher on the table with it.  It was sort of a general, all purpose condiment.  It is this hot sauce that we decided to include for our gift baskets. 

We found adorable little swing top bottles at Hobby Lobby on sale for $2.  This is usually still expensive for me, but they were so cute I couldn't pass them up.  Then I double checked the recipe online and found that this sauce is definitely a historical South Texas table necessity.  How neat! 

Anyhoo - the directions are pretty easy.  Pick about a bajillion chili petins.  Seriously.  I counted and we used over 2000 and we still have one empty bottle that we'll have to fill next week when more of the chilis ripen.  Boil your containers like we do when canning.  Then heat some vinegar just until it starts to steam.  Rinse your chilis and pack them pretty well into the bottles.  Pour the warm vinegar over the chilis.  Close and let cool.  Wait a couple days then start to use it.  Noah's parents have had theirs for about 3 weeks and they say it is HOT!  A couple drops will spice up just about anything.  So basically, these little bottles of hot sauce cost us about $2.03 each.  It would be almost free if you just reused a bottle that used to have store bought sauce in it.

Here's what they look like -

 

Pretty, right?

 



I'll have more updates in the next few weeks, I promise.  See you on Thursday!

~Heather