where has the time gone????
Oh my!!! Time has flown since I last updated
Full of big plans to expand our chilli growing we had 500 plants growing and looking really healthy then along with the rest of New Zealand we got the Great Summer that Wasn’t. Lack of sunlight and howling winds resulted in a small, late crop of chillies (saddly not all the ones we had hoped to sell but enough for our products)
We have expanded our range of products to include flavoured salts, rubs, chilli powders as well as our sauces, chutneys & jams. All based around things we grow.
We flew through our last audit for MPI in May and got the go ahead from the auditor to start making apple cider vinegar to use in our products. It will be so good one more ingredient coming off our block of land. There are a couple of other new product in the pipeline that we have the all clear to start producing as well- watch this space :-)
Most of our current sauces are fruit based and range in heat from 0/10 to about 7/10. I am working on a range of hotter sauces and last week made a couple of test batches. One was a sauce made with white chillies & white carrot, the colour is stunning but although it tastes ok I think it still needs a bit of tweaking. The other one was made with chocolate 7 pot chillies, yaki blue chillies, chocolate capsicum, black garlic (which I made) and a bit of balsamic vinegar. I love the flavour but the heat did bring a tear to the eye when I took a big mouthful (I learnt fast small doses only), the lips tingle for a good 15 mins after eating. I am really looking forward to creating some more hotter sauces 8/10 to 10/10 heat range.
I harvested the outdoor turmeric today but left any of the smaller plants to grow for another year. After sorting and separting the bits to use from the bits for planting there will be enough to double what we grow. When I checked the turmeric in the tunnel house growing under the lettuce gullies the tubers were covered in new shoots nearly ready to come through the soil. The mixed up weather has them thinking it is Spring - guess they get to grow for another year as well.
The apple trees loved the extra rain this year and Steve is pressing heaps for juice to make the cider vinegar with plus I have done dehydrators full of apple chips and put some into the freezer to use in our sauces etc.