Thai Pepper Garden
Last year, Craig grew a beautiful crop of Thai Dragon peppers, tobascos, New Mexico chilis and paprika peppers. He was much aided by a great site called Chili Pepper Plants and also by Shepherd Seeds, which now seems to be White Flower Farms. We have three volunteer chili pequins that are perennial, too.
We have a theory. If you plant your sweet peppers in with the hot ones, they seem to turn hot -- hybridizing on their own? Cross-pollinating? Anyway, it seems to work, and the product is the best of peppers: you get the flowery taste of a hot pepper, and heat that you can stand.
Thai dragons have unique flavor. They are tougher than many peppers, highly productive, and no bug or bird even considers eating them! You have to handle them with great care when cooking. There is nothing worse than cutting up Thai Dragons and then carelessly touching your face or, worse yet, your eyes. They subdue criminals and mobs with this stuff! Craig makes a good hot sauce he learned from Lawan. At Siam Garden, they used to call it "You-chew-you-through sauce."
Long ago, we had a lovely little coffee grinder. We got bored with grinding prissy little quantities of coffee beans every day and reverted to ground coffee. So Craig one day had the idea to grind his dried hot peppers in it. The first time, he did it in the house, and we had to evacuate. Never again. After that, he did his grinding on the back porch. Then one day we went on a trip (Hawaii, I think it was) and left our friend Cori to house sit. While we were gone she brought her friend (now her husband) Doug to the house for dinner and served him espresso...fresh ground! They had hot coffee.