Picking a pepper from the potted patio plants puts me in a perfectly perplexing position. Nate has planted plenty of particularly identical peppers in one pot, so picking a pepper is puzzling. If I pick the wrong pepper, the family salad becomes an overpowering ring of fire that sends everyone to the kitchen sink—fighting to stick their faces under the faucet while screaming, “No more salads! No more!”
Here’s how we sometimes end up in this situation: Nate has planted about three different varieties of peppers in one pot—and they’re all growing abundantly. One is a mild banana pepper. The other is a not-so-mild banana pepper. The third variety is a kind of sweet bell pepper. However, all of these peppers are all the exact same shade of green (banana pepper green—a shade that carmakers have not tried yet and I can’t figure out why.) They’re also the exact same shape: banana pepper shaped (which would be a fun shape for a department of motor vehicles building). Actually, the sweet bell pepper variety that Nate has planted is not shaped like a banana pepper when it reaches maturity. However, it starts out looking like a banana pepper, which is really, really confusing. Inevitably, when I go skipping into the backyard to pick a pepper, I end up with the super spicy variety, which knocks us off our chairs when we’re least expecting it.
To avoid this trouble, I let Nate pick the peppers because he has a knack for weeding through the complexities of subtle pepper shapes and nuances. He shares a secret language with them. They whisper their stories, and he listens. Sometimes they tell him horrible, horrible stories about me. Here’s an example:
“She stepped on me the other day,” they say.
“Once, she licked me to see if I was spicy. She licked me!”
And Nate comforts each one and gently cradles them in his arms to bring them inside and set them on the kitchen counter. Then, we have the following conversation:
Nate: This one’s not spicy.
Me: How do you know? Did you do the “lick and pick” method? I swear by it. Lick the pepper first to find out if it’s spicy.
Nate: About that. . . they don’t like it when you do that.
Then, I open the sliding glass door that leads to the backyard and I stick my tongue out at them. Nate swears he hears them screaming.
The other night though, Nate picked a beautiful sweet pepper, which we all enjoyed on our salads. It was nice to eat a salad together without having to warn one another about potential danger lurking between intermittent pieces of spinach and tomato. This one was perfect—a perfectly peppy pepper picked from a pot of puckish plants.
Your Turn: Do you have a method for picking the perfect fruit or vegetable—either in the grocery store—or in your garden?
I have to admit that your method sounds much more entertaining, but I do the planting here so I know what is what. However I also will only plant hot peppers together in one container and only sweet peppers in another. If there is more than one variety in a container, I will definitely use plant markers…but that’s because we are old and Hubby can’t tell the difference.
In a grocery store, I am at the mercy of the produce person and trust they know the difference and put the different peppers behind the appropriate signs.
Your steak salad sounds wonderful!
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Plant markers would be a plus:) I also go by the signs in the grocery store–they’ve never really failed me. Thanks for stopping by!
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I’m allergic to peppers, so no peppers for me. Picking zucchini choose firm and small. Apples: make sure the little end opposite the stem is closed, less likely to find bugs inside. Berries, I simply want them not green and not fuzzy. LOL! Bananas blessedly ripen as they go, but look for no bruising and separate them when you get home if you want them to take longer to ripen. When picking tomatoes, citrus, and berries from the vine or tree, if they come easily they’re ready, but if they cling to the plant, they’re not ready. 🙂
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Lots of great tips here–thanks!!!
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Yea, I don’t lick and pick when shopping 😂
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Neither do I–just once or twice in the garden. 🙂
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A practically perfect pepper post in every particular. My kid sister had a slight lisp when she was younger, and walked around doing tongue-twisters her teacher gave her, so I heard Peter Piper a couple thousand times. I still like peppers, my sister won’t eat them. But I love banana peppers on a submarine sandwich.
I do ok with avocados, melons, etc. but finding a perfect watermelon still baffles me, they seem expressionless to me, and don’t act up in the back of the class, so I can’t tell which ones are immature.
It’s tough to decide which is more worrisome, licking, or talking to, the produce! 🙂
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Tongue twisters are awesome–love your prolific use of them here:) I used to use tongue twisters on the first day of Spanish class with my students–helps with pronunciation:)
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Oh that would lead to some interesting meals!
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Yes–we love hot and spicy peppers, but not all of our meals need to be sooo spicy:)
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Lol I’m like that too. There are certain dishes I don’t want hot and spicy!
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I go to the Farmer’s Market and ask the farmers to pick me the best.
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Love it!
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I like surprises. Perhaps that is why we like Padron and Shishito peppers so much. They say one out of ten or one out of twenty are hot. After briefly sautéing them whole with the stems in a little olive oil then sprinkling them with coarse salt we grab them by the stems straight out of the hot pan and bite off the entire pepper. It is mostly with expressions of pleasure that we devour the peppers but an occasional howl of pain (huge exaggeration there) is part of the fun.
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I’ve never tried the Shishito peppers before, but I hear lots of great things about them–I’ll have to try them some time. Thanks for stopping by!
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Who would have thought that vegetables could be so entertaining!
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Thanks!
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Hi. I love your first two sentences. So many words that begin with p.
See ya! Enjoy the new week.
Neil S.
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Thanks, Neil!
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I love peppers, but don’t have a garden atm. No picking for me, just picking out at the grocery store or market.
Great post. 🙂
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Thanks! I do most of vegetable shopping at the grocery store (no licking and picking there–wouldn’t dare!) But, occasionally our small garden yields some treasures I can’t pass up.
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The occasional tomato is good when it comes away at one twist. In the market, aubergines with a dot ( as against a dash) at the bottom end mean less seeds and the same for bell peppers with 3 bumps. I get the ones with 4 bumps to put into salads or eat raw otherwise. More seeds, but sweeter. Females no?!
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These are great tips! Thanks!
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I think the licking test would get you in trouble at a grocery, so I prefer not to use that method. Hard if you plant all the same color range as I think color is a good choice.
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I agree–no licking and picking at the grocery store–I am proud to say I’ve never done that there. (Maybe a as a child, though–I’ll have to ask my mom.) Thanks for stopping by!
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😊
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ok this post made me smile. I would be frustrated if you had three kinds of peppers that look the same in the same pot… that just doesn’t work. In the grocery store I just try to feel them to see if they are firm enough, beyond that it is just a guessing game for peppers and me. I think I’ll skip the licking step since I get my peppers at the store
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Happy to make you smile! Yes–at the grocery store, I do NOT lick anything:) Just the occasional taste test in the garden–cheers!
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I never know how to tell when melons and such are ripe. I could fake it and listen closely while knocking on it like some people do. Are they waiting to hear an answer from inside? I just grab and go, hoping for the best.
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You can hear the ocean if you listen hard enough to a watermelon 🙂
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Ha!
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I picked the wrong pepper from a pepper bar once. Back in college, after a night at the club, my two buddies and I went to an all-night place called Two Pesos that had a pepper bar. One of the guys was like let’s have a pepper eating contest! Bad idea. I grabbed peppers and we bit in — Fiiiiiiiirrrrrrrrrrrreeeeeee. I’d grabbed three raw Serranos which are no way close to today’s real mouth burners but are still plenty hot and I didn’t eat spicy stuff back then (now I love Habanero-flavored food). It felt like I had gargled acid. I felt a bit better because my buddies were having trouble too and they were both Mexican and supposedly (according to them) able to handle the heat.
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Oh, no! Serranos are very, very spicy. I did a study-abroad program in Mexico for a month when I was in college and I didn’t notice that the food was that spicy. My host mother was an excellent cook. She made sopes and served them with a kind of pepper that I thought was rather mild, so I kept eating the peppers. When she realized that I had eaten many of these peppers she looked alarmed. I assured her I was fine–they weren’t too spicy, but she fixed me some herbal tea and I’m glad she did. The “kick” from the peppers came much later and the tea she made took the edge off just in time. Still, those sopes and peppers were so good, I’d eat them all over again:)
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I love your opening line 😀
We tried growing peppers last year but they didn’t come to much. Letting my mum do it this year, but it’s pot luck what we’ll get given to eat! I prefer growing cucumbers and potatoes, much easier 🙂
We usually buy ‘Wonky vegetables,’ which are reduced because they’re oddly shaped. I try to avoid anything that might be spicy though!
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Thanks! I love that idea of eating “wonky vegetables.” They’re perfectly fine–and tasty.
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thats great u have an abundace to choose from
i only get a few on my plants that i eat more faster than they can grow
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Nate (my husband) does a great job of making things grow:)
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I love the lick and pick technique! But definitely best saved to use on your own garden produce. I would have to label those plants though, that would drive me crackers! We have a greenhouse dripping with peppers and chillies, about 40 plants (all labelled 😉 ). My partner loves hot chillies and will make jars of chilli sauce once the hot ones are ripe. I prefer the milder varieties! We’ve never had much success growing bell peppers, probably because our greenhouse used to be on an allotment that we couldn’t get to every day to tend, but now it’s in our garden. We have a lovely yellow variety, though I’m impatient and keep picking them whilst they’re still green!
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Wow! A greenhouse–that sounds lovely!
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Ha, I like your method, though I’m not sure it would be very welcome at the store! So I go from sight and/or smell, depending on what I’m buying. Though I have to admit it’s 99% smell. So if you ever see the crazy lady smelling fruits and vegetables… that might be me! XD
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Right–not recommended for grocery shopping–and for the record, I do not use that method at the grocery store:) And, it’s always good to stop and smell the roses–or carrots. Cheers!
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Ha! I actually like the earthy smell of fresh carrots, but I’m a weirdo like that! Also, recently read your barracuda short story (I know, super late) and it’s great! I could totally see it actually happening in your real life! lol
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Thanks for reading:)
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