Today, only 49 days after planting the little seedlings (see May 22 entry), I harvested seven jalapeño peppers.  With ample water and sunlight, the scrawny plants have now grown to about 2 feet, with minimum care.  The ripe jalapeños were about 3-inches long with a bright shiny green color.  There are still about 10-15 peppers ready to be harvested, and many more blossoms.  I will harvest more in a couple of days, but leave some of them on the plant until they turn red.  The red jalapeño peppers are sweeter and not quite as hot.

Since I don’t use jalapeño peppers regularly, I need to figure out what to do with all these peppers since I don’t want them to go to waste.  I can probably freeze or pickle them, preserve them in olive oil, or add them to homemade salsa.  In the meantime, we sliced the peppers for Southwest burgers, stuffed them with goat cheese for poppers, and added to some pub cheese (another good buy from Trader Joe’s) for nachos.  None of our dishes were very original or creative, but they were all very tasty!

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