A little spice

The jalapeño pepper plants in my garden have done extraordinarily well.  There were/are dozens of good sized jalapeño peppers.

Of all the garden produce, the jalapeño peppers have required using the most creativity to use.  It’s not like you can just bite into and snack on a jalapeño (well, you could, but that would be weird and painful).  So here's what I've done with my jalapeños.    

I cut some up and put them on some nachos.  Pretty delicious.

I chopped up a jalapeño and mixed it into some black bean burgers I made.  I really couldn’t even detect the spiciness of the peppers in the burgers, so maybe next time I’ll put a bit more in.

I made some jalapeño poppers on the grill.  I cut a few jalapeños in half lengthwise and removed the seeds and the membranes.  I put them on the top rack of the grill and let them cook for about 10 minutes.  Then I added a bit of cream cheese to the inside of each jalapeño.  I let them grill a few more minutes.  It’s a real good thing the cream cheese was there because even with the cooling effect of the cheese, the jalapenos were super spicy.

I took on the whole salsa-making-extravaganza mostly as a way to use up a bunch of jalapeños.  And I sure did use a lot of jalapenos.  My first batch of salsa wasn’t spicy at all.  I just finished up the first jar of salsa from that first batch.  I’m not entirely sure, but I think that the second batch of salsa that I made is going to be a little bit spicier.  When I was making it I didn’t quite have enough regular green peppers so I put in extra jalapeño peppers.  I haven’t tried this batch yet, but I do hope it is at least a little spicy.

There are still quite a few jalapeños on the plants and I’m not sure what else to do with them.  If you have any suggestions let me know!