First Pepper

Everything’s exciting when you have a garden growing. Today, while watering, I noticed my Cowhorn Pepper plant has an actual Cowhorn Pepper on it!

This was an accidental purchase – I thought I was picking up a Coolapeno. I was intrigued by a pepper that has the jalapeno flavor without the spiciness. When I got home, it turns out someone had put a Cowhorn Pepper plant in the Coolapeno tray.

That’s okay though; the Cowhorn Pepper sounds interesting, too. It grows around 10″ long and at 2500 – 5000 on the Scoville scale, it is similar to or a little less hot than a jalapeno. One online article claims it is “a perfect pepper to add a slight bit of heat” to a dish. Now, I’m just waiting for it to ripen and turn red. I look forward to trying it.

Amazon had Prime Day this week and I acquired two new preparedness tools.

Trail Cam. I’ve been concerned about security on my property; however, I have struggled to commit to buying a security camera. Finding a camera with the features I think I need at the price I’m willing to pay wasn’t going well. It was just too much money to make a mistake on.

Someone suggested I look up “trail cam” instead of “security camera” and wouldn’t you know it, trail cams tend to be less expensive. When one I’d been looking at was reduced to just $25 on Prime Day, I snagged it. It will be a great way to begin to learn what features I really need and how useful it will or won’t be to have video surveillance on-site.

Cast Iron Skillet. I’ve been wanting to learn to cook with charcoal. It’s something I haven’t done for decades and I was not good at it. I was a member of the use-a-whole-bottle-of-lighter-fluid-to-light-the-charcoal club.

There is value in adding this to my catalog of Emergency Preparedness skills. Did you know that it takes only fifteen 20-pound bags of charcoal to cook one hot meal a day for one year? In an emergency situation, having a hot meal is not only nourishing to the body but to the spirit.

Unfortunately (or should I say, as usual?), my aspiration in this regard has had a lot of false starts.

I bought a Volcano Grill way back in 2010. (Yes, I’ve been dragging my feet for over 10 years). I felt it would make a great tool to have in an emergency situation because it’s portable and it can use charcoal, wood, or propane as a fuel source. However, I never even took it out of the box.

I bought a bag of charcoal in 2019 so I could start learning how to use it … I’ve been shifting that unopened bag of charcoal from one room to another for the past two years.

Last summer I told Oscar he needed to get it out of the barn so “we” could start using it. (I said “we” but actually mean him.) He never did, though he did say he found it.

Then I realized I didn’t have appropriate cookware for cooking on charcoal or wood – I had given away my cast iron cookware a long time ago.

Now that I have a cast iron skillet I will hopefully come up with no more delays/excuses for starting this endeavor.