Chile Pepper Forum on KKUP Thursday 28th of July

Welcome to listen to the Chile Pepper Forum on Thursday the 28th of July.

More info here =>http://www.kkup.org/calendar.htm

Regards,
  Mats

The starter kit for a great lunch

Hi!

The starter kit for a great lunch :-)

First. This sign near the salad bar made me smile!

Second. So nice to be able to have pickled cucumbers and jalapeños as a side dish.

Hot regards,
  Mats

Yucatan and Palenque

Hi!

April 24th and it's been snowing and raining today. A good day to stay at home. I found some old pictures from the end of the 90s, that I'd like to share.


Here we are in a restaurant in Palenque. We drove around, chasing chile peppers and pyramids. There were plenty of both :-) Check out the condiments on the table. I can still remember the taste of the red and green sauce. And how nice to have some sliced jalapeños.

Palenque

Another thing I won't forget is the steep steps on the pyramids.

I'm not 100% certain, but I think this is from Palenque

 Useful with a rope.

Palenque (?)

Uxmal, Pyramid of the magician

Chichen Itza (really steep steps.)

Have a nice day!
   Mats

Chiles in Sweden :-)

Two pictures from our holiday.

This one is from Umeå, in the north. Along the river walk, we found this chile pepper plant. If you look at the lower right corner, there is a pod. Probably a jalapeño or similar. Totally unexpected :-)

And in Visby, in a café garden, we found a pot with a C. annuum. I couldn't identify it, but it looked fine :-)

Hot regards,
  Mats

Oh those habaneros!

Hi!

It's funny. The climate this year is different. We're still more or less waiting for the summer, and everything is late. The same for my chile peppers.

The only one with ripe pods is the red habanero. And the malagueta, but that one is from last year, and one of the over-wintered varieties.

I love the feeling of picking a ripe habanero, feeling the weight in my hand.

Makes me want to do this :-)

But we chickened out, and had only half of it on crisp bread with lunch. The smell and taste is fantastic, and the heat is manageable. I'm more and more getting back to basics, with the old favorites. The super hot ones have never really caught on here :-)

Still waiting for my baccatums. I think they are even better than the habanero, when eaten fresh, as they are.

Have a hot week!
   Mats

Peach jalapeño, ice cream

Hi!

Yesterday I found this peach jalapeño ice cream while shopping for food. Of course I just had to buy it, though I was a bit suspicious. Today we tried it, and I think it could have been better. (My humble advice to the manufacturer. If you do something as a chile pepper ice cream, make sure that you have clean and clear flavors.) This one turned out to be a little bit of everything. No specific taste of peach, which was a disappointment. The heat was OK, but I miss that typical jalapeño flavor. What to expect from a chile head :-)

Well, anyway. Enough of ice cream, and this disappointment. We're having a heat wave, and it's almost tropical. Some pictures from a short walk yesterday evening.

Have a great weekend!
   Mats

Hot socks

Hi!

What a weekend! We went down south, to Ystad, to meet our friends Jim & Dot. Here we are at Ale's Stones, having a great time.

It's a truly magic place. You can read more about it here.

We also went to Glimmingehus, which is a fortress from around 1500. It was a special day with Knights and tournaments.

It was a beautiful day, so many people visited.

Today we went home, and passed Brahehus, which is a nice place too.

The view over Lake Vättern.

But that wasn't was I was going to write about. I got socks from Jim & Dot. Aren't they cool? No, hot I mean :-) In grey.

And black :-)

It's a wonderful world of chile peppers :-)

Hot regards,
  Mats

The first ones moving out

Hi!

Today I decided to move some of the peppers outside. I chose the overwintered varieties. It's always a thriller and kind of a big moment to move them out. The weather is not so predictable, but I think they will be OK.

Here you see a tepin to the left, a malagueta in the middle, and a rocoto to the right. The rocoto doesn't really show, but it's there. The malagueta is full with flowers, and some pods. Some mature, and some new ones.

And here is an overwintered Brazilian chinense. It has flowers too, and maybe it will be too cold for it at night, but I give it a try...

And here is a happy me, enjoying the sunshine :-)

Have a great week!
   Mats

Stockholm - question

I like to walk around in Stockholm with my camera around my neck. It's good as a change to crawling on the balcony, taking pictures of peppers :-)

I like the perspective of this one. Three landmarks of Stockholm in one shot.

Do you know where the picture is taken?

Regards,
  Mats

Jalapeño cheese

Browsing through pictures from the vacation. This is how happy we were when we found a Jalapeño Cheese in a Norwegian food store :-)

It was actually quite good. Haven't looked for it in our food stores here, but I wouldn't be surprised if I find it here as well...

Keep it hot!
  Mats

Happy Midsummer

I was hoping for my annuum from Brazil to turn red. But I'm still waiting. I'm not sure how much the temperatures matter for the pods to ripen. We're having a cold midsummer, so it won't be the heat that makes these pods red... :-) For the moment, we're having 12 degrees C...

Anyway! We're going to have a hot midsummer. But in another sense. :-)

Wishing you a great weekend!
   Mats

Recife, Brazil

Hi...
Some more old pictures... Well, you can tell it's winter outside, and I enjoy being inside looking at old pictures. This time, from Recife, Brazil.

Some malaguetas and yellow cumari (?)...

And here I am again, with some of the typical bottles with pickled peppers to the right.

More chile peppers! Nice bottles...

Hot regards, Mats

Salvador, Bahia

Some more old pictures. Back to 2001. Brazil, Bahia - Salvador

Here we are on the way to the market. It's in the yellow house down in the right corner.

Here I am in chile head heaven. Bottles with malaguetas and other pimenta baiana.

Acarajé. Fried stuff in palm oil. Just looking at the picture, I can feel the smell. Wonderful flavours!

I don't remember the name of this market, but it was very inspiring. You see pickled malaguetas and cheiro. And in the basket I think there are some cumari. Actually, I think that one of the cumaris on this picture is the grand parent of the cumari plant that I over-winter this year.

Hot regards,
  Mats

El Paso

Found some old pictures. Back in 1995 I was driving around in California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas.

Here I am outside El Paso Chile Company... A big moment for me :-)

El Paso is on the border to Mexico. On the other side of the border is Juarez. There was a market there with fresh vegetables and chile peppers of course. Here is a picture with some of the jalapeños and güeros that I bought... Yes, I agree that the bedspread (?) has a terrible design, but I was probably so overwhelmed of the chile peppers, so I didn't notice at the time I took the picture :-)

Hot regards,
   Mats

Happy New Year!

Hot regards,
  Mats

Capsicum marsipanum

Nom nom!!!

Not all chiles are hot! Carl made this one. And it's already in my stomach :-)

Hot regards,
   Mats

Chillibeans...

Another advertisement, but I'm not in any way connected to the company. I think it's a funny name, and it makes it even more funnier that they are selling ....

.. glasses.

Isn't it a wonderful world! :-)

Have a great weekend!
   Mats

Chilli club

Hi again!

Another picture from Brazil :-) No ordinary tourist pictures here ...

Walking on the street, we passed a car. Talk about pattern recognition, but my eyes got caught on this sticker.. Don't know what it is about. Just that I liked the logotype :-)

Hot regards,
   Mats

A ship loaded with ....

Hi!

Long time since my last post. This chile pepper year was not very productive. I still have a few plants left. Waiting for the pods to mature. I won't give any promises about updates or pictures, but in the meantime I will share this picture with you.

It's from our recent vacation in Brazil. I think it' the right spirit to have a ship loaded with ...

... pimentas :-)

Abraços,
   Mats

Time flies

Hi!

Already June, and I realize that there have been very few updates since the start of the year. Actually no updates at all. I ended up in a philosophical discussion with myself. I thought that it was the same patterns repeating themselves year after year. So the conclusion was that there was limited value to write about all the repottings and work. But of course, priorities change, and I have been busy with other things.

Anyway, that doesn't mean that I have quit growing chiles :-) It has not been a very good start of the chile year. I have had problems with aphids (again), and plants have died and I have had to restart and do the best of the situation. I have some really nice plants, and that's good. But I also have some that I doubt that they will survive midsummer. But we will see. Maybe I will take some pictures of them and see how they develop.

So, here are a few of the plants this year. In the back corner I have blackcurrant. It's been out all winter on the balcony. Wrapped in some fiber cloth, but I was surprised to see that it survived. It's nice. It has good history. 15-20 years ago, I had the "mother" plant on my balcony, but it grew too big, so I gave it to a friend who planted it in their back yard. And this one is the cutting from that one. Nice. It has some berries already, so that's fun!

In the left corner, there is a spruce (?). Also out there all year around. It's growing nicely :-)

New for this year, is that I took bokashi, and put it in a big box. We're goring salad and radishes and nettle there. The bokashi seems to be fantastic for the plants. It's not very practical to do compost when living in a flat, so we have stopped that experiment now. Here are my two fellow field workers getting ready to pick some salad :-)

And here is the first radish for the season! It was delicious!

Well, not so much about chiles, but hopefully there will be a good chile pepper year without any aphids and pest. So I hope to be back with some more chile pepper pictures :-)

Until we hear again - keep it hot!
   Mats