Easy – The Pirate Pieman

I love growing hot peppers and the jewels in the crown of my garden this year are the Tabasco Pepper and The Gong Bao Pepper. The plants were beautiful however I suspect their location did not deliver enough sunshine as the Anaheim’s were short and less abundant. I grew four kinds of peppers that are prepared in very different ways.

Serrano- eaten fresh red or green in salsa
Anaheim- roasted and diced, added to anything you want to have a little kick
Gong Bao- dried and crushed to eat on pizza, pasta and soups
Tabasco- mashed and fermented into a hot sauce

I will share more about the hot pepper sauce we are planning to make with the Tabasco Pepper but today I thought I would share how I am preserving my Gong Bao Pepper.

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While the Serrano and Anaheim peppers are meant to be eaten green the Gong Bao are intended to be a brilliant red pepper with thin walls, good flavor and moderately intense heat. This plant was so beautiful and delivered red peppers in July and continues to produce into October. So that I don’t get overwhelmed I created some ristras.

Creating a ristra with needle, sturdy thread and gloves to protect my fingers from the hot juice.

This is a simple process of stringing the chilis together and hanging them in a dry airy place. In past years I have strung chilis by piercing them at their stem however when they dry the stems want to fall off and this can make the ristra more fragile. Here I simply pierced them in the middle of each pod and keep the needle attached so that I can add more as they ripen and are harvested. When full I tie it to some cardboard and start another. Don’t forget to wear gloves for this project the fresh chilis will emit juice when pierced with a needle.

Gong Pao Thai Chili ristras hanging in my family room alongside some rosemary and sage.

Eventually these will be dry enough to process into red chili flakes. The green stems are removed and the pods placed into a blender. Depending on the level of heat you enjoy you can remove some of the seeds for a milder effect. My husband likes to grind them with a spice/coffee mill and put it in a shaker so hot pepper can be added to everything.

Enjoy!

In 2011 my husband James innocently brought home a Niagara Grape Vine and asked me “where should we plant it?” I thought our stark chainlink fence separating the front and back yards would be a nice structure to support the vine and, into the ground it went. On September 8th, 2013 we got our first (and best) harvest of grapes.

Niagara Grapes, West Michigan 2013

Niagara Grape Harvest

Niagara Grape Jelly 2013

Single Niagara Grape vine growing on fence in 2018.

It was a big project but I made some mediocre grape jelly which was tasty but runny. Most years we allow the birds (often Cardinals) to have the grapes (and raisins); the primary harvest for myself has been the VINE! Since I started using grapevines for projects in 2014 I have learned a few things about crafting with vines, here is what you need to know:

Supplies:

Gloves
Pruning shears
Measuring tape (so you know how big your wreath will be)

There is a sweet spot for working with grapevines. Too soon and you might as well be working with asparagus, too late and you are working with toothpicks. I have made both of these errors. This photo shows the magic balance between green vines and drier areas that are darker in appearance. If the canes are too dry they can be soaked in water to make them less brittle and if they are too green you can let them dry out a day, maybe two. Even if the canes break or splinter you can continue to make loops and wrap them up. When the globes or wreaths are dry you can adjust the vines to improve the overall appearance.

I usually start from the ends of the individual vines and remove leaves with my hands and then with sheers trim the tendrils away from the fencing and other vines to produce a pile of canes. I sort the largest canes for bigger wreaths and begin arranging them in circles using the longest most flexible vines to wrap around the bulk to secure the wreath.

Vines stripped of their leaves.

Wreaths set out to dry.

This year (2018) I got started a little too early and the vines were easily broken (like asparagus) but I had a lot of them so I pushed ahead anyway. As you can see one grapevine in a sunny location in West Michigan can give you a lot of material to work with.

Because in past years I have made a lot of wreathes, I was interested in trying some 3-D globes I saw on Pinterest. Off to the Dollar Tree I went for some beach balls. They worked well to hold up the vines while I wrapped them. In addition to these globes I made a smaller one freestyle without an armature; and some larger wreath shapes (since I already have some small and medium wreaths from last year.) It takes a couple days in the sun for the vines to dry and turn reddish brown. I fed my failed attempt to fashion a basket to Donald https://piratepieman.home.blog/2018/09/11/feeding-donald-our-hot-compost. It was so bad it couldn’t even be photographed well.

Grapevine wrapped beachball to create a globe.

Overlapping first few vines to secure the base shape.

I tried to keep the vine’s tendrils for visual interest.

And once your shapes have dried you are ready to start doing some crafting. I have not fully sorted out what I am going to do with my new globes so if you have any suggestions please leave them in the comments below.