Cayenne Dreams

I have exciting news. Exciting to me, anyway. Like most of the news I mistakenly think other people will be excited about. I'm starting to get a few peppers on the plants I'm growing.

Sadly, my best plants are a couple of Home Depot "banana pepper" plants, which I did not grow from seed. They've been producing for quite some time. The others have had problems with bugs and blossoms falling off. But I have at least two new peppers on a plant I grew from nothing. My naga jolokia is fruiting!

This is a story with alternating layers of success and failure. Failure: most of my plants aren't fruiting. Success: but one is, and it's a naga jolokia! Failure: but it's the wrong naga jolokia!

The newly discovered jolokia peppers suffer from nomenclature troubles. If you root around on the web, you'll see "naga jolokia" used to identify two completely different peppers. One is a habanero relative so hot you can weld with it. The other is a slightly less hot pepper which looks more like a Thai pepper. The second one is less macho and prestigious. It's the one I ended up with. Still, it's way too hot to eat, so it's still fun, and that was the point of growing it. If you Google around, you'll see it labeled "C1 pepper" or something like that. I forget.

The really nasty ones were only available from the University of New Mexico when I was buying seeds. Maybe that has changed.

I'm also getting peppers on my Jamaican hot chocolate plant. That thing is a goddamn brute. It laughs at bugs and blight. But I think the heat is holding it back. It has dropped a fair number of blossoms, but some are finally trying to fruit now that the weather is almost bearable. My tepins seem to have a few pepper fetuses as well.

As for the "banana peppers," I was considering yanking them and throwing them in the trash and putting something better in their pots. These were supposed to be the classic hot banana pepper, which is a big fat Hungarian wax pepper, I think. Big enough for frying in slabs. Instead I got long, skinny, crinkly peppers. I was disgusted.

Today I decided to start harvesting them, however, since it seemed silly to give up on them without trying them. They're getting big and red and ripe, and I couldn't leave them out there until they withered. I popped five or six off the plant. I had to use a knife; they weren't ready to let go. Today I tried one. And it's excellent! Really impressive. It's about as hot as a hot cherry pepper, I would say. Hotter than a pepperoncini, but still not too hot to eat whole. And it's ridiculously sweet! It tastes like a big long cherry. I was not expecting that. I just ate one, and while it would be a little rough eating a whole bowl of them without stuff on the side to cool me off, by itself one pepper was delicious and not too painful.

My best guess is that these are cayenne peppers. That's what they look like. The big ones are around six inches long, and they're bright red and squiggly. Whatever they are, they have huge potential. I was thinking a great snack would be a bowl of these with cold sour cream for dipping. Yes, sure, later there would be ungodly flaming diarrhea. But I'm used to that.

I had no idea cayenne peppers tasted this good. I could see using these as the basis for a magnificent pepper oil. Not sure what kind of oil to use. Maybe sunflower seed. Something neutral that tastes better than canola. I could grind a bunch of these bitches up, pack them in a jar, and fill it with oil. Then the pigment and heat would seep out into the oil. If I had lots of oil, I could use it as a condiment. If lots of peppers but not much oil, I'd have CHILI PASTE!

Oh YEAH. I'm getting excited now. I can have a bunch of different varieties of chili paste or pepper oil! And the nice thing about trying the banana peppers is that if they work, I can send readers to Home frigging Depot to make their own. No mail ordering. No Googling. No seeds.

I like the chili paste from Chinese restaurants, but it's not sweet. I think it's made from those ordinary old dry peppers they always use in everything. I don't know.

Imagine...tepin chili paste. Fatali chili paste. Caribbean red habanero chili paste. NAGA JOLOKIA PASTE! Hey, how about flavor and sweetness from one pepper, and heat from another? HAHAHAHAHA. I'm on a roll.

Hmm...I wonder if I could mix lime flesh into chili paste. Or maybe mango flesh. No...mango boiled, strained, and turned into a reduction! Oh baby. That might work.

I wonder if I could make a sauce from sun-dried tomatoes and chili paste. Do you have to dry a chile before turning it into paste? I guess not.

What else is going on? My yerba buena died, but I had no idea what it was anyway. I didn't care enough to save it. My oregano is finally growing, but it's so strong I don't know if it's usable.

Holy crap. Sweetened chili paste with deep-fried wings.

Sorry to interrupt myself. That idea just came to me.

Here's crazy news. Remember how I Cuisinarted some of my surplus basil and made it into a spray for my plants? It seems like it's working. The bugs look like they're hitting the road. Unbelievable.Too early to say if it's definite. I wonder if slopping basil paste around the bases of the plants would do anything.

When I first decided to save the cayenne peppers, my plan was to pickle them. They're so sweet, they'd be better than cherry peppers. But now that I see their true potential, I'm not sure I'll pickle any of them.

So anyway, the pepper efforts are paying off. Still not sure about the tomatoes. Right now I'm Florida's leading producer of spectacular blossoms that fall off and die. I put a couple of plants in the shade to see if it would help. Mike claims tomatoes do great without much sun, in spite of what everyone says.

I may go eat another pepper. I'm afraid to give them to Marv and Maynard because they've had sevin, malathion, and two types of pyrethroid on them. But those things aren't a problem for human beings.

OH GOD. PASTE FROM SMOKED OR ROASTED CHILES.

Sorry.

In unrelated news, I am getting quite a few comments on a politics-related post I stupidly put up. Some are just imbeciles telling me I'm bitter and envious--not sure of whom--but others actually involve thought. I basically repeated my belief that the conservative media craps on new talent, and I pointed out that pseudo-tased pinhead Andrew Meyer will probably become a left-wing pundit of some stature as the result of his silly publicity stunt. And I said writing a conservative blog was a waste of time.

"Aristomenes" says I--along with a few other bloggers he mentions--have an impact. I appreciate the compliment, but he's wrong in my case, because I quit the game. Flattering to be included, but I don't deserve it. I used to wake up every day, eager to find something left-wing to ridicule on this blog or Huffington's Toast. My work is nothing like that now, and it never will be again.

Another guy says I'm wrong about established conservatives ignoring the little people, because Malkin and some other bigwigs have linked him a few times. My response? Blog links are not help, unless you get them by the thousands. Book contracts and syndication deals and TV and radio appearances are help. Jobs--the kind that pay--are help. At the moment, the only somewhat-established conservative supplying meaningful help to new talents (and not just those with big tits) is Greg Gutfeld. And I kind of suspect he's not above blackballing the occasional potential guest.

If you're not getting enough blog links to lead to better things, what you're really getting is food for a sad addiction that leads nowhere.

Someone else says I'm right about Pajamas Media dividing the conservative blogosphere. And he's correct. Until I read his comment, I don't think I really thought about how right I was. Pajamas Media has accomplished absolutely nothing worthwhile, but look at the enmity it has sown among Internet conservatives. I predicted that in 2005. There are pro-PJs and anti-PJs, and the pro-PJs really want to squash and ignore the antis. If you're anti, you just don't get the kind of links and emails and so on you got before Roger Simon started his foul, fetid, ridiculous enterprise. There are exceptions, but generally, I think PJM has been unbelievably bad for blogger teamwork and unity. And liberals absolutely love it.

It seems like there is now a crowd of pro-PJ folks who are doing well, who really despise the antis. Malkin, Reynolds, Andrew Breitbart, the Powerline boys...I think these people would be thrilled if we all dropped dead. Maybe they can keep people off Fox News, and maybe they can choke off the link supply, but on the other side of the coin, what are they doing that helps anyone? Who have they helped propel to stardom? If you want to punish people you hate, fine, but are you doing anything to help the people you like? It seems like PJM has resulted in a lot of hostility and division and retribution but absolutely nothing positive.

It doesn't matter how they treat me, because they couldn't do much to help me even if they wanted to. I refuse to do political stuff. It might actually cause me problems if a lot of prominent conservatives started boosting me. But there are other people out there who could use some attention. I haven't seen any sign that they're getting it. Am I wrong? Let's see...who are the funniest bloggers I know who aren't in PJM's crosshairs? Goldstein, Iowahawk, and Allahpundit, maybe? Too lazy to make a good list. Have any of them been invited on TV panels or radio shows or anything? Are they being invited to write for TNR or WSJ? If so I guess I missed it. I don't think they've even been on Red Eye.

I guess it's okay to talk about this, since the person I'm going to mention used my very-public comments to contact me. Jeff Goldstein read my entry and linked to it, and he asked if I could hook him up with my agent. Jeff is a PJ or former PJ--not sure--and we are not all that close. We had a bit of a falling out. I'm not planning to send him a Christmas card. And I can't do much to help. But I contacted my editor and agent on his behalf anyway and gave him what little advice I could, simply because I'm not a flaming petty asshole. You don't screw with someone's career because he got on your nerves once or twice (or because he correctly said Pajamas Media was stupid). If you can do something in five minutes that will be of value to someone in their efforts to succeed, you do it, unless that person is a mortal enemy OR...you're a flaming petty asshole.

Maybe I've answered my own question. Beat a typical human being to a good parking place at Lowe's, and it will make his day when you get cancer. Among media types, including bloggers, professionalism and maturity are pretty much nonexistent.

Hell, I removed John Cole's personal information from my comments, at his request, at a time when he was busy referring to me and Moxie and Ann Althouse as "the Axis of Asshole." I may be critical and somewhat nuts, but I haven't lost sight of a little thing called perspective.

To get back on track, sort of, it is just now hitting home how destructive Pajamas Media may turn out to be. Among bloggers who get four-figure and higher traffic, they have really screwed up the system. I have to wonder how much of the right-wing blogosphere's decline is due to the existence of this silly, counterproductive guild. How different would it be today, if we were not divided by this pointless boondoggle?

Very interesting question. We would be working together more. Only a fool would argue with that.

Whatever the answer is, I'm out of political writing for good, so I don't care. I am doing my best not to worry about the USA. My dad always says he did well under both Democrat and Republican administrations, and that the important thing is to take care of yourself. I think about that every day. The GOP is doing every stupid thing it can think of, and throwing the Internet--the future of the media--down the toilet is just part of it. I can't stop it, and even if I could, no one would let me play, and even if they would, I absolutely love what I'm doing now, and I wouldn't dare do anything that could screw it up. This all worked out well for me. I feel the way I did when I sold at the top of the NASDAQ bubble a few years ago. I think the GOP and the US need to get back on track, but I can't help.

That's the situation I believe we're in. So enjoy the remaining episodes of The Half-Hour News Hour, I guess, while it stinks to the ends of the galaxy and puts the "STUPID" stamp permanently on the forehead of every conservative. Enjoy the strange Surnow-assisted decline of Dennis Miller. Enjoy the gradual unraveling of Ann Coulter and Ted Nugent and the bizarre and off-putting things that are going on at Fox News these days. Learn to love all of it, because I don't think things are going to change until way after the elections.