Great to know, Lynn. Thanks for sharing that info. Not sure I could use them instead of pickles, though!

Shoe, no snow in my part of the state, it was about 60 today down from 80 last week, but I'm still in sandals. Don't need peppers in my sandals. Yet.

My brother though, who still lives in the old hometown, has a foot of snow.
Tough in my mountains!! Not so tough here in the flat lands.
Maybe he needs peppers in his boots. Ya reckon?

GREAT article Sharon

I have "tasted" that clear drink - reminded me of wintergreen or spearmint

We love jalapenos and use latex gloves when stuffing them. Shoe has eaten them with us as well

LOVE that heat

Morning Vic, somewhere along the way you needed the croup cure, right?

Jalapenos, I usually break out in sweat when I simply see the word.
Thanks Vic.

on the opening thumbnail!

I went out and took some photos of our cayenne peppers (which thankfully did NOT get killed in our light frost the other morning). So this article has a new thumbnail now.

Thanks Dave.
West KY peppers were crunched by the drought this year.

Great picture!

(Using Shoe's newly favorited hat icon!)

These plants were loaded down earlier this year and Trish harvested hundreds of them and strung them up to dry. They made really nice long dried pepper arrangements ready for future use in cooking. I should have taken a photo back then but I didn't think to. So the plants just have a few little groups of fruit now. Oh well.

My gosh, this thread moved right along.

In answer to your question somewhere up there Sharon, I know my brother is now a believer.

Moby, I missed you earlier, mixed in as you were with all the Shoe conversation. Good to see you!

That would have been a good image, Dave; somebody already mentioned how plants make great decorations along with their edibility. (Is that a word? My computer red-lined it.)

Glad you added this new one to the database since it was fairly empty of images.

Sometimes we get carried away, Polly.

Wonderful article Sharon. Cayenne is used almost daily in my cooking, from a sprinkle to a teaspoon, and very often jalapenos. I love pickled hot banana peppers and eat them just about every day on sandwiches, or whatever, they are great on pizza.

Glad you enjoy the hot peppers, Margaret.
I like them too, but not so much in abundance.

Heheh, "Using Shoe's newly favorited hat icon!" Yeh, that one's a keeper! (Course now, I'm one of those throwback males who still tends to tip my hat to certain elders, even if it's just a quick wiggle of my cap brim!)

Thanks for the new photo, Dave. I didn't mean to stir up trouble mentioning the jalapeno pic.

By the way, yesterday I learned a new pepper tidbit. I have some great Hispanic friends up the road from me and also have (or had!) a large bag of jalapeno peppers in my shoffice, freshly picked. Since I can only pickle so many I called them to ask if they would like some; their answer was a definite YES with the addition of "I'm a jalapeno". I had to ask "say what?".

After a few more sentences with both of us trying to understand each other (I don't speak much Spanish and they speak broken Southern, the latter being my chosen language, similar to the English language ) I finally learned my friends are from Halapa, a town in Vera Crus, Mexico (and sometimes seen spelled as Jalapa, or the original spelling of Xalapa. It turns out the people of Halapa are known as Halapeno (jalapenos) AND it is where the now-famous jalapeno pepper is known to have originated or maybe was first cultivated. So, a lesson out of the blue from a true Halapeno about jalapenos, eh?

Thanks again for the article, Sharon. I'll have to now go find friends who are from "Cayenne" or wherever that might be, eh?

Shoe (looking forward to Dave's pic of Trish's string of cayennes..hint hint)

I learned by trial and error to wear gloves when cutting up hot peppers. NEVER and I mean never touch you eyes after handling those hot peppers! My DH keeps a small container of cayenne pepper close by and puts it on all his food. Glad to hear of all its healing qaulities. Thanks Sharon for another great article.

All that cayenne on everything he eats should make your husband mighty and strong, Pegi!
Thanks for taking a look at the article.

I'll be sharing this with my sons-in-law! They love cayenne peppers and like their chili spicy hot. Now they have more uses than I bet they knew about.

Those first pictures of the cayenne pepper plant are so pretty! What a beautiful plant.

I love heat in my food! When my forehead and the back of my neck bead up with sweat and I get that tingly feeling going up the back and top of my head, that is some good heat I'm not a fan of tabasco, but I love crushed red pepper flakes on my pizza. There is an awesome Thai restaurant that knows how to add heat to a dish.

I have sprinkled red pepper around some of my daylilies because stray cats (or whatever) wanted to make beds out of them. It's supposed to deter them, but whether it did or not, I'm not sure. I just know that I didn't see any more flat daylily clumps.

Love it, shoe! That's an interesting story.

I'll reward your Halapeno story with a photo of the string of peppers. Gotta get the camera out.

"How to add heat to a dish" . . . that's a great phrase, Vickie.

Looking forward to the picture of a string of peppers, Dave, and Shoe, your Halapeno story was almost a tongue twister to read. Broken Southern in a Spanish accent.

Thanks for the info on hot peppers, Sharon.

I'm currently on a low salt diet and can't tolerate lemon, so cayenne is a must-have on all of my baked fish. I knew that ginger was a good stomach soother, but I didn't know that cayenne was too.

You're welcome, Chelle.
Sometimes I think the secret to good health lies in what we eat. Maybe too, what we don't eat.