"Hackett's Hotties," Or So They're Tentatively Called

I love hot peppers. Sliced, packed and soaked in vinegar with floating chunks of onion and whole cloves of garlic. The same kind that you see here. The kind you can't find at the market. Peppers so delicious that you consider eating them for breakfast, as my wife did this morning when she asked if it would be disgusting to put hot peppers in her yogurt. Honestly, I thought that she was on to something. Popcorn, pita chips, cheese, and any type of meat, really, are made instantly better with hot peppers.

What I love most about them is the care and sacrifice that goes into making something homemade. You know that someone went to the market and bought pounds and pounds of peppers or, even better, picked them fresh from their garden. Then, they lugged the produce into the kitchen, washed and sliced an ungodly amount of hots into little rings and peeled multiple cloves of garlic. At this point, you know that their house smelled like your Italian grandmothers house always smells, and you know that they didn't wear gloves and that the oil from the peppers seeped through their skin and into their blood stream causing body temperatures to rise, sweat beads to roll down foreheads, and fire to shoot out of unmentionables. And you know that they literally burned for days after jarring dozens of hot peppers, unable to rub eyes or touch skin without it becoming red and blotchy. The hours and extra effort make the peppers taste better and, in turn, the peppers make everything else taste that much better, too. It is not the story of store-bought peppers, and if you appreciate homemade hots as much as I do, you may want to know more about where you can get some for tomorrow morning's breakfast.

Where I come from, family, neighbors and friends give jars of hot peppers to one another as gifts. In this case, Jake and Amber (my cousin and his girlfriend) graciously brought us a jar of their homemade peppers last week. Jake is enthusiastic when it comes to jarring peppers. He wants people to experience the joy that is hot peppers, wants to form an assembly line in his kitchen and do this, really do this, so that we can sell them at neighborhood street markets. I have no doubt that people crave jarred hot peppers, just as they hanker for Handle's ice cream and Briar Hill pizza from the Avalon Gardens. What I don't necessarily agree with is the name of this venture, the very name we will give to jars of homemade goodness, the result of long hours spent slicing and dicing, sweating and burning. The name, at the moment, is pencilled in as "Hackett's Hotties." Can you see where I might take issue? It's not the first half, it's the second. The "Hotties" part. I have time and space to get into this but instead will leave it up to you. Please comment below.

And If you would like to order a jar of hot peppers, leave a comment or email me@jasoncandoit.com. Jake will be thrilled.