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>> My father loved to garden. He used to have about 1 acre of garden and he loved to grow many different things. Of course, when I was young, I helped him weed and pick vegetables. In the first home we bought, I tried to grow tomatoes. It was a miserable failure. I just don't have the green thumb that my dad had.Besides all of the vegetables he grew (and loved to share), the one thing I truly miss is his cayenne pepper (dried and ground fine). The cayenne pepper you buy in the stores is just not as strong as what he grew/made.
@Retired_Engineer:
I never thought to make my own pepper spice. I will have to research how to make it. I have made hot sauce before and that is awesome!
@N+T: It was pretty simple. Once the cayenne peppers are ripe, pick them and spread them out on something that air can pass through. My father used a couple of screen doors he got from scrap. Spread the peppers out in a single layer. He then put the screens horizontal in the rafters of his barn. A fan to circulate air helps. Once they are completely dry, grind them into a coarseness/fineness you like. He had an old grinder hooked up to an electric motor. I usually did the grinding. Just feed the peppers in and let them grind. If it wasn't fine enough, he put a different end plate on the grinder and I re-ground it. WARNING: when grinding cayenne peppers you WILL get pepper dust all over you. I learned early in life not to touch my eyes or any sensitive skin (if you know what I mean) until I THOROUGHLY washed my hands. Dad saved old glass jars with their screw-tops to store the ground pepper in. He also made numerous types of pepper sauce. One of which I could not eat because it was way too hot! Usually, that's just coarsely ground peppers, other flavoring you want, some salt, and vinegar. Seal it tight in a screw-top glass container. The vinegar keeps it from spoiling. It never lasted long around our house because dad gave all the neighbors and friends jars to take home.
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