SC - Food Gifts

[Mordonna22 at aol.com]

Well, I've just finished making a batch of what my Southern Ancestors call 
pepper sauce.  I'll be giving some of these as gifts in the coming season.
I've a pepper bush that's fruiting right now.  Don't know what it's botanical 
name is, we call it bouquet pepper.  The fruit changes color from green, 
through yellow, and red, to purple as it ripens.  All colors can be found on 
the bush at once, and it is a pretty accent plant for a garden.  The peppers 
are small, about 1/2 inch long, and rather egg shaped.  They are perhaps not 
as hot as habeneros, but fiery enough to require that one eat them 
judiciously.  
To make Southern style pepper sauce, you clean the peppers, place in pretty 
bottles, pour boiling vinegar over them, cap with glass, cork, or plastic 
caps, and allow to mellow before serving.  At least 30 days, but the longer 
the better. 
This year I used cut glass cruets with glass stoppers found in thrift stores, 
and white wine vinegar.  I got 1 red, 1 yellow, 1 green, 1 purple, and 2 
mixed batches from the first picking.  The white wine vinegar and clear glass 
make the colors stand out and sparkle for a very pretty presentation.
The pepper sauce is served as a condiment with almost all vegetables: field 
peas and greens especially.  When I was growing up, every cook had salt, 
pepper, pepper sauce, sugar, and cane syrup on the table with every meal.  
The pepper sauce and the sugar were sprinkled sparingly over vegetable 
dishes, and the cane syrup was used with pork dishes and mixed with butter as 
a topping for biscuits.

Mordonna the Cook,
SunDragon's Western Reaches
Atenveldt
(m.k.a. Buckeye, AZ
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